Heroes and Monsters
by Sababwl
Summary: "The world of Remnant could always use more heroes." The cast of Overwatch re-imagined as staff and students at Beacon. Runs concurrently with the RWBY plot, but with minimal involvement from the RWBY cast.
1. Hero

The city of Vale, late at night on a Saturday; the sprawling bastion of humanity was teeming with life. In one place, crowds lined the streets as the most popular club finally reopened. Somewhere else, a gentleman-thief and his lacklustre goons chose the wrong Dust store to rob. All across the city, a thousand stories played out, shared by a hundred-thousand people. But all those stories, and all those people, were somewhere else.

Jack had waited patiently, shadowing his prey across half of Vale, until huntsman and prey were finally alone, choosing a deserted industrial area to make his move.

" _Eyes on target, street level, one block east."_ A familiar voice hissed through his earpiece. Jack had flicked the safety off his weapon as soon as he heard the static buzz preceding the message.

"Acknowledged, thanks Ana." He whispered back, and then darted into the nearest alleyway.

Just before he entered the next street, Jack skidded to a stop, pressing his back against a wall as he slowly approached the corner. Barely even breathing, he inched his way towards the edge, head tilted so he could peer into the open while exposing only the slightest sliver of his head.

The target was walking – nay, _strolling_ – down the street, billowing black hooded cloak concealing their features, but there was no question in Jack's mind. This was the man he was trying to find; the man he was trying to kill.

Jack pulled back and readied his weapon. Modern hunters were often extravagant in their armaments, with multiple transforming modes for mixed melee and ranged combat, but Jack was not the kind of person regularly described as 'modern'. He was just fine with an off-the-shelf pulse rifle, loaded for Wind- and Burn-Dust. And no, he hadn't given it a name, _thank you very much_.

"Ana, weapons free as soon as I open fire. Let's end the bastard."

" _Roger that – WAIT! Unknown contact, six-o'clock!"_

Jack immediately saw what his friend had noticed, though how the newcomer had so far eluded all three of them was a mystery for the ages.

"Stop, in the name of the law!" A high-pitched and sharply accented voice shattered the midnight quiet. The cliché command was made no more intimidating for coming from what looked to be a scrawny teenaged girl. The youth wore a bomber jacket and bright orange leggings, of all things, with a pair of goggles holding back her short chocolate-brown hair, which otherwise seemed to be flying off in literally every possible direction. A pair of bulky, finned gauntlets completed the 'look'.

Jack watched with trepidation as his target stopped in their tracks, and slowly turned to face the would-be law enforcer. The dark cloak swept aside to reveal an equally colourless suit of form-fitting polymer armour, the pitch only broken by a bandolier of crimson ammunition. The most striking feature, however, was the 'face' that could be discerned underneath the cowl. The figure's features were hidden by a solid plate, pale matte white like bleached bone, the expanse only interrupted by a pair of eyeholes that seemed to open only into darkness. The figure cocked his head to one side, contemplating the interloper in bemusement.

"Because of your suspicious activity and, you know, dressing like a psychopath, I am placing you under citizen's arrest!" The girl exclaimed, seemingly unphased by the intimidating presence before her.

The cloaked figure reacted in two ways: firstly, he began laughing, a low chuckle that reverberated unnaturally and set the hairs on Jack's neck standing upright. Secondly, he reached an arm across his torso, to one of his hip-holsters.

Jack looked at the monster he had spent years hunting for, the bastard who was now in the open and distracted. He looked at the girl, the civilian child, who comprised said distraction. There was no choice, not even a moment's hesitation.

"GET OUT OF HERE KID!" He yelled without looking, spinning around the corner and raising his rifle in one smooth motion.

If the figure was surprised at Jack's intrusion, his only reaction was to shift his gaze to the aging huntsman.

Jack squeezed the trigger, sending a spurt of fire, metal, and Dust racing towards his prey. However, while the cloaked terror hadn't made any effort to dodge, Jack's aim was far from perfect as he dove to place himself between the dark presence and the defenceless teenager: his shots all went wide.

Somewhere behind and above Jack, a loud _crack_ echoed through the night, and where he had failed, Ana's aim was true. Jack almost smiled as he saw the line of light pierce the figure's chest, but the smile died quickly when his prey did not. Rather than the flesh of his torso exploding in blood and gore, as Jack would have sorely liked, the figure seemed to dissipate around the contrail, his features fading into tar-coloured smoke, that faded into nothing.

"Ana, do you see the target?" He barked into his microphone.

No reply. In the distance, he heard the telltale boom of her sniper rifle, but what she was shooting at, he could not tell.

"ANA!" He shouted, as if that might somehow improve the signal.

"Dear Ana is preoccupied right now, I'm afraid." A low, growling voice emanated from behind Jack, and the old soldier whipped around as fast is humanly possible – perhaps slightly faster.

He froze completely, however, when he saw the figure, with one black-clad arm clutching the girl to his chest. To her credit, the girl wasn't panicking, but she was definitely keeping a very close, and very wide, eye on the sawn-off shotgun that was now pressed up against her jaw.

"Reaper," Jack began, speaking painfully slowly and deliberately, "let her go. This has nothing to do with her."

Reaper shifted slightly, seeming to consider the girl, but without for a moment removing his gaze from the huntsman standing opposite them.

"No." Reaper deadpanned.

 _Well, it was worth trying_ , Jack thought to himself. Reaper had a hostage, Ana was still silent; Jack had nothing, and they both knew it. All that work, wasted, because they both knew he wouldn't risk a stranger's life.

"So, am I your hostage now, or something?" Said stranger looked away from the weapon at her head, and towards Reaper's faux bone mask.

"Yeah, and you're doing great, kid." Reaper replied lightly. The girl, however, frowned, and seemed to ponder for a moment.

"No thanks love." And then she was gone.

Not gone like Reaper could be gone, dissolving into smoke and shadow, but simply not there anymore. Unwilling to look anywhere but directly at Reaper, it took Jack a few moments to realise she was somehow standing beside him now, and holding a pair of submachine-guns as well.

Then a lot of things happened all at once. Reaper drew a second shotgun from his hip - even though it hadn't been sitting there until he reached for it - and leveled a weapon each at his foes. Jack aimed for the ground at his feet, and thumbed the secondary trigger, launching a flare of red Burn-Dust streaking towards the Reaper. The cloaked villain nimbly rolled aside, his armour shrugging off the debris kicked up by the fairly small explosion. As soon as he was standing, however, Reaper found himself at the center of a storm of bullets, the girl unloading the ridiculously fast weapons at their target.

 _One at a time, girl,_ Jack thought without saying, _stagger your reloads._

Not that it mattered though; of the small portion of shots that were actually on target, none actually broke through the Reaper's defenses.

"Oh well." The girl, her weapons exhausted for now, simply shrugged and flashed Jack a grin. Flicking her wrists with the motion, her dual guns span and folded back into her gauntlets, while simultaneously, from another section, large blades extended backwards to run parallel to her forearms. "I'm better at close range anyway."

"Not today, you aren't." The old soldier growled back, keeping his rifle trained on the motionless Reaper. "Get back, run away if you can."

The girl was obviously a huntress in training, but even if she was old enough to be a graduate, it wouldn't matter. The Reaper and Jack had been fighting, both each other and others, for decades. The girl was no threat to the cloaked man; she barely even qualified as an annoyance.

To her credit, the girl moved to place herself behind Jack, but he would really rather not worry about her at all. He finally noticed, in the lull, that he could no longer hear the sounds of Ana's sniping, and offered a quick prayer that whatever trouble she had found was not too much for her. Jack had little doubt she could deal with any of Reaper's henchmen, but he was in no position to offer help if she needed it.

Experts at reading each other, Jack and Reaper ended their short break simultaneously. Jack sent short, controlled bursts chasing after Reaper, who elegantly dodged and span away from each stream. In return, the villain offered the occasional blast from his shotguns, but at even medium range they barely registered against Jack's defensive aura.

Whenever Reaper got too close, Jack would sprint or roll away; at close range, it was certainly Reaper's fight to lose. If he got too close to the girl, a quick Dust rocket served to dissuade him. It was a dance they were both all too familiar with, at least until the music changed.

With a roar, an airship appeared, angling carefully into the wide street. The matte black colour with red highlights left no doubt in Jack's mind who it was here for. Indeed, as soon as it landed Reaper began backing away towards it, still sending out the odd blast to prevent Jack from following. Throwing caution to the wind, the old soldier held the trigger on his pulse rifle down, sending a river of dust and metal in a vain attempt to cut off the Reaper's escape. The bullets only swirled through the villain, however, as his features retook that shadowy consistency, and the incorporeal man floated swiftly to the safety of the ship's waiting interior.

As the ship pulled up and away, Reaper reformed on the open ramp, looking down at the old soldier with scorn somehow visible on his unmoving mask.

"Better luck next time, Jack." Reaper called out, and then, he was gone.

Jack took a moment to catch his breath, and to curse under it, before tending to the next most pressing issue.

"Ana, status? Where are you?!"

A pregnant pause hung in the air, accompanied by a cold feeling in the pit of Jack's stomach, before _finally_ his communicator hissed to life.

 _"I'm sorry Jack, there was an enemy sniper. Gave me the run-around, but I'm okay."_

"Good," Jack let out the breath he had been holding, "meet me back at Beacon, there's one more thing I have to take care of."

"You're a real huntsman, from Beacon?" The girl asked from behind him, with a soft and clearly nervous laugh.

Jack slowly turned to face the youth, very definitely not laughing. Usually the look he gave her now caused blood to drain from faces, but this one was already unnaturally pale.

"Do you know how to treat gunshot wounds?" She asked, and then promptly collapsed in a dead faint.

* * *

 **Author's Note: Hey there, hypothetical reader, and let me start off with a huge thanks for taking a look at my first ever fanfiction. I've read so much over the last few years, and had so many ideas, but this is the first time I've ever put pen to paper (figuratively, that's not how the internet works).**

 **There is a little bit of housekeeping I want to get out of the way, and we'll start with the big one: this story is very much going to be a side thing for me. My life is quite packed, and while I do have plans for this, it isn't going to take any sort of priority. Don't expect regular updates, and we may well never get to the ending that I actually haven't of about yet.**

 **Secondly, a little clarification on what exactly this hot mess is supposed to be. RWBY's Beacon Academy has always felt very empty for a school, with like twelve students and three teachers, and for a while now I've had an idea in my head to use the heroes from Overwatch to populate it. I never planned to actually write fanfiction, but late one night during a few rounds of OW, I told my friend this idea and he said I should do it. It was late at night, so I was like "Okay". This is NOT the OW characters replacing the RWBY ones, this fic will play out at the same time as the events of the show are happening in the background, with RWBY characters around but not really being important to the plot here.**

 **I'll also try to keep things cannon compliant, but of course RWBY has an intricate, ongoing plot with a habit of dropping new reveals and causing severe emotional pain in equal measure.**

 **Currently, the plan is for this to be mostly shorter, almost slice-of-life style chapters just showing how the OW crew gets on at Beacon, interspersed with longer, plot advancing stuff when I have time.**

 **Of course, all of these plans could change if this somehow becomes popular. I'm trying to be realistic, I'm neither asking for nor expecting this to become the new hotness, but if it just _does_ , I'll probably put more work into it, but right now I just want to get to the part where I show that [CENSORED] is actually [REDACTED] and I also have [DATA EXPUNGED] as another team and dear sweet mercy I hope it's actually as cool as it seems in my head. Still a ways off though.**

 **[Names and Skins]**

 **Soldier: 76 (Professor Jack Morrison) - Classic without facemask  
Reaper (Gabriel Rojo) - Classic  
Tracer (Eleanor 'Lena' Oxton) - Classic without Chronal Accelerator**


	2. Healer

Lena's return to the waking world was gradual, less a discrete awakening, and more a slow realisation that reality had overtaken her fevered dreams.

In the pre-dawn gloom, it was hard for Lena to discern her surroundings. The bed she lay in was not her own, but as memories of the previous night resurfaced, the Mistralian teenager assumed she was in a hospital. _No pain though, so I guess we're sweet_ , she mused internally, continuing to assess her environment.

As her eyes adjusted to the low light, what she had assumed to be the walls resolved into a curtain of fabric surrounding her cot. To one side sat a vaguely lamp-shaped shadow, and a few seconds of half-awake swiping flooded the area with a warm orange glow, revealing that it was, in fact, a lamp.

This discovery also allowed Lena to lift her blanket and see the hospital gown someone had left her in – _that's two-for-two on the guesses, go us –_ and she also noticed a table opposite the lamp, upon which sat her favourite orange-tinted goggles, as well as her dual mechashifting gauntlet-warglaive-machine-pistols, Phase and Pulse.

All was right with the world once again, and Lena was about ready to get back to sleep when she heard the shuffling of footsteps, and her privacy curtain was carefully pulled aside.

Looking in on Lena was a woman she had never met before, somewhat elderly judging from her fully white hair and the lines that ran deep into the brown skin of her face. The woman wore what looked to be pyjamas, with some kind of lab coat hastily thrown over top. The coat was white with red accents, and Lena couldn't help but notice a certain amount of tears and scorch marks dotted across the surface, as well as signs of multiple repairs.

The most striking features of the visitor, however, were her eyes: the left had a curious, curved tattoo around and beneath it, while the right was hidden beneath a thick black eye patch. Even so, the eyes were friendly, and when they met Lena's the whole face bloomed into a smile that could only be described as motherly.

"My my, you woke up quickly. Aura boosting is such a wondrous thing, no? How do you feel, my child?" The woman asked, Lena placing her lilting accent as hailing from the far western reaches of Vacuo.

"I'm fine, good even, cheers." Lena responded with the best smile she could muster. "Quite tired, ma'am, but there's no pain. I don't remember much about the fight though."

"Excellent. You only took a grazing shot, a few pellets to the side of your waste, no need to worry dear. For one so young, it's perfectly normal to be exhausted after your aura is depleted."

"Okay, thanks. Sorry if I woke you up. If you don't mind, ma'am, where are we?"

"Not to worry dear, we'll both get our beauty sleep soon. Where are my manners though; my name is Doctor Ana Amari, Chief Medical Officer of Beacon Academy, and you are a welcome guest in my infirmary."

Lena's eyes lit up.

"Beacon! Oh that is tops, I'm actually coming to study hear this year, so I'm sure we'll see each other loads!" Lena paused, her grin dropping like a rock and her cheeks pinking as her own thoughts caught up with her words. "Not that I plan to get hurt a bunch and wind up back here, but, well, I mean-"

"Hehe, settle down child, I know what you mean." Doctor Amari stepped closer and put a reassuring hand on Lena's shoulder. The reassurance was coupled with a gentle yet firm push, sinking the agitated teen back into her cot. "And I know you're a student, miss Oxton. Rest now, you can spend the next two days here, until initiation. However, the man you helped last night, _Professor_ Morrison; he will be your battlefield tactics instructor, and after yesterday's showing, I believe he intends to have some rather _loud_ words with you tomorrow."

Lena whimpered involuntarily, but she agreed that some sleep was the best course right now. She was alive, she was comfy, and the scary angry professor was sounding distinctly like a tomorrow-Lena problem. Doctor Amari wished her a good night, and flicked off the lamp as she departed, while Lena lay back and allowed the gentle darkness to envelope her once again.

* * *

 **Author's Note: Anyone who read this story in it's first year might remember a different, comedy-focused chapter two. That chapter is now non-canon, but parts of it will be rewritten as part of later chapters, and once there are more characters and less hospital beds I will be swinging back towards a more comedic tone.**

 **A quick note on names, both team and personal. I am NOT sticking to the RWBY colour naming rule. Even though it's justified in canon, it doesn't make sense to me that EVERYONE would do it, and with how little we actually know about many Overwatch heroes, their names are going to be important to making this not feel like twenty OCs. Thus, I saved name changes for when I had a specific reason to do it, such as Lena being short for Eleanor because I want an E in her team's name.**

 **As characters are introduced, I'll include a direct reference to what skin they're using after the chapter, as well as a justification for any names changed. Nicknames (e.g. Tracer) will be used later on once characters become more familiar with each other, and it's those character I'll generally be more comfortable making alterations to their real names.**

 **[Names and Skins]**

 **Ana (Professor Ana Amari) - Merciful**


	3. Humbled

Reaper stalked irritably into the safe-house he and and his colleagues were currently working from.

There were many different ways to stalk, for a scholar of dramatic body language. One might stalk menacingly, or stealthily, or even seductively, were they so inclined. Funnily enough, for impressionist walking techniques, the difference often lay in the shoulders and torso, rather than the legs; it was all about the combination of angles, and how much sway each part of the stalker's body was allowed. A true master could even distinguish between grumpy-stalking - the kind that says 'Get out of my way' - and angry-stalking, the 'It's too late to run' variety. And Reaper was a true master.

So he traipsed through the safe-house, intent on reporting the night's events, and then finding somewhere warm and dark to curl up and ignore the world for a few hours. That is, until his traipsing was interrupted by a harsh, barking laughter.

"What are you _DOING_ with your arms?"

Reaper employed one of his favourite maneuvers, a slow, deliberate turning of the head while his body remained still, to glower at the woman who had called out to him. Regrettably, the younger woman was no longer looking at him, having returned her attention to some game she was playing on her scroll, sprawled across a threadbare couch in what passed for their living room.

In contrast to Reaper's billowing black hooded cloak and skull mask ensemble, Olivia Colomar - codename Sombra - wore a dark grey coat with purple highlights, the violet matched on her leggings and the ends of the half of her hair that wasn't shaved to the scalp. Subtle and menacing, Sombra was not, but Reaper had to admit she looked like exactly what she was - a tech-savvy attention seeker who didn't care for traditional good impressions. In another life she could have passed for either a political activist or a hot-shot CCT developer. While Reaper had a great deal to say about Sombra's professionalism, however, he could not deny that having the young prodigy providing tech support was a coup for his own enterprises.

 _At least, when she actually did her job, that is._

"Where were the police tonight, Olivia?"

"Oh yeah, turned out Torchwick was making a mess across town. Kinda more important to the VPD than 'some spooky guy' Gabe-"

" _Reaper"_ Gabriel Rojo interrupted with pure ice in his voice.

"Ugh, fine, Reaper, point is all the cops were busy. Ironic though, things were just getting quiet when your friend showed up. Another half hour and you could've had your cops."

"That's not what irony means," Reaper muttered under his mask, before continuing aloud, "and there's the other problem. You're my eyes and ears Sombra, how in the HELL did you let _JACK MORRISON_ of all people sneak up on me?!"

"The heck do you want from me, I can't exactly follow his dustagram account, your guy's off the grid. I checked all my camera hacks, I didn't even see the old dude leave Beacon, let alone show up in the streets."

Reaper deflated slightly, acknowledging - though not ever out loud - that the girl had a point. Technological savant she may be, but Jack Morrison was an outside-context problem for the hacker.

"Okay, last thing before I am _done_ with tonight: Did Amari get eyes on our friend?"

"Heh, yeah, 'eyes'."

Reaper leveled a deadpan glare at the girl, despite wearing an unmoving bone mask. In another life, he might have been the greatest actor in Remnant's limited - but vibrant - film history.

"Noooo, at least not that they've said. Long distance battle in the dark, no distinctive weapon or semblance, I'd say we're good."

"Good." Reaper nodded, letting out a tired sigh. "I'm going to-"

As Reaper turned to leave the room, he found himself instead bouncing off a person-shaped wall of muscle that had appeared behind him. Reaper, quickly regaining his wits, tore his eyes away from the mountainous pectoral muscles and up and up _and up_ to the bald visage of Akande Ogundimu, aka Doomfist, arching an artful eyebrow back down to the cloaked figure that had just rebounded off of him.

"... file a report?" Reaper finished weakly.

"No time like the present." the dark and shirtless titan less said and more announced, his natural baritone lending more gravitas to his words than Reaper's affected gravel ever could hope to. "You failed, I take it?"

"The police were preoccupied, sir, Torchwick-"

"Yes, yes, I am aware of his latest escapade. Sombra, I want you to do some digging, find out why that thief is making so much noise all of a sudden."

"No problemo boss!"

"And you, Reaper," the addressed just managed not to cower under the larger man's gaze, "it's too late to try again, we'll just have to hope our previous efforts have been enough. At the very least, our sources within Beacon indicate that the plan has not been uncovered. Stay quiet for now; no missions, sanctioned or otherwise, not until your friend Professor Morrison goes back to school at least."

"Yes, sir." Reaper said softly. Akande had a funny way with words, his casual dismissal more alarming than any threat or rebuke.

Akande nodded once. "Stay here, you two, and report in daily. Let us know if you need anything."

"Yes sir." Reaper repeated.

"Ooh, more medical supplies!" Sombra spoke up, earning bemused looks from both men. "We keep cutting ourselves on all Reaper's edge." She finished with a feline grin.

Akande left the room with a hearty laugh, while Reaper tried his best to manifest the 'if a look could kill' cliche through his mask.

* * *

 **Author's Note: So, uh, this _MIGHT_ be coming back, a bit. Short version, I'm in teacher's college now, and it's kind of consuming my life. Thusly my very slow efforts to write an actual novel are being sidelined, but I want to dip back into fanfiction to try and keep my creative writing skills sharp. You may think that it makes no difference, writing is writing, but for me fanfic requires a lot less time and planning to write, since things like world and character are already built up for me. Still very much a side project, hoping for roughly weekly but college will always come first, especially in a few months when I'm actually in a school.**

 **[Names and Skins]**

 **Sombra (Olivia Colomar) - Classic**

 **Doomfist (Akande Ogundimu) - Classic, shirtless, I heard he's shredded**


	4. Air-Ships

_=Attention: The 12:15 Beacon airship is now boarding. All passengers for Beacon Academy, please make your way to Gate 27 now.=_

"I'M GOING!" Angela shouted to nobody in particular. Or perhaps the young huntress was in fact replying to the intercom, she was not sure which option made her look less crazy.

The blonde dashed through the Vale Inter-kingdom Terminus, with a long staff slung over her shoulder, and dragging a train of no less than three connected luggage trolleys, each piled high with suitcases. Weaving madly through the crowded terminus, more than one security guard began to chase the careening girl, then saw the weapon, made the connection that the girl could likely bowl right through any five of them, and wisely decided to let the huntress have her way with their workplace.

 _=Attention: Final call for the 12:15 airship to Beacon Academy. All remaining Beacon passengers, please make your way to Gate 27 immediately.=_

"Just hold on!" Angela begged, still not entirely decided on who or what she was begging. She was currently still at the check-in counter, loading the half-dozenth-ish case onto a conveyor belt.

"Oh, you're headed to Beacon?" The clerk, a woman in her twenties who managed an honest smile despite her frazzled hair and baggy eyes, asked.

"Yeah, but can we please hurry, sorry." Angela spoke as quickly as she could manage.

"Well, if this is all your huntress equipment, that will make the paperwork go a lot quicker, and we can get you on that airship."

Angela stared blankly at her own luggage for exactly one second before responding.

"Yes, all of it is my weapons and armour."

 _=Attention: Paging Angela Ziegler. Please report to Gate 27 for boarding IMMEDIATELY.=_

Angela didn't spare the time or energy to shout at no one this time. Relieved of her train of baggage, she simply sprinted, shunting aura into her legs to lend her a speed only a professional athlete could hope to match without having their soul unlocked. She burst through the Gate 27 doors with such force, she might have worried about breaking them if she had spared it any attention, erupting out onto the sky-docks.

In the distance, she could see the airship to Beacon, the largest ship in the docks, its four massive fins waving lazily through the air as it prepared to depart. Reaching the proper pier, Angela grabbed a nearby pole to swing around without slowing down, not even registering that the metal post bent slightly with her motion. Now she was dashing full-tilt down the pier, she could see other students standing on the deck, some watching her and pointing.

It was no use though; not even two thirds of the way down the pier, a loud _clang_ resounded through the docks, and the bulk of the airship began to drift away.

Angela didn't slow down.

The skydocks were built over Vale Harbour, and while it was a good five story drop to the choppy waters below, Angela had no doubt her aura could protect her from such a fall. Not that she had any intention of falling.

"Please work, please work, please work..." she muttered under her breath, a mantra of hope and desperation.

When she reached the end of the pier, the airship was at least fifty meters away; too far for her to leap, even with aura. Yet leap she did. As her legs cleared the platform, Angela took the soul-energy she had been using to sprint tirelessly, and fed it instead to a device she wore on her back.

The device - one of her own design, though she had much help in the construction - unfolded two sets of panels once her aura began to flow through its Dust circuitry, excess energy leaking out of the polymer sheets and trailing behind her like feathers of pale yellow light.

A smile broke across Angela's face as she realised the wings were working; she was not falling, but rising up and up! Up, over the ocean below, over the airship's railing, over the main deck, and straight into the unyielding wall of the upper deck. Then she fell.

When the stars cleared from her vision, Angela found a small crowd of fellow teenagers gathered around her, a roughly even mix of concern and amusement on their faces. Ignoring the onlookers - and not even noticing the offers to help her - Angela sprung to her feet and dashed once again across the deck. After all, she was not the only one at risk of missing the ship.

Once inside, she grudgingly slowed to a jog, though the odd trainee huntsman still had to employ their honed reflexes and dive out of her way. It was a matter of agonising minutes to find the cargo hold, and minutes more to search for her own luggage, but her heart soared when she laid eyes on her own suitcases, stacked slightly haphazardly in a corner.

"You made it." she whispered to her own luggage, stroking the side of the uppermost case lovingly before reaching for the zipper. She had to know. She had to be _sure_. Angela doubted she could survive Beacon without the contents of these cases.

She lifted the opened flap, and didn't even try to stop a tear of joy forming in her sparkling eyes, breathing a sigh of relief as the saw a witch's hat and matching robes.

Her costumes had made it.

* * *

Satya Vaswani had traveled half-way around the world, all the way from the eastern continent of Anima, across the sea to Sanus, soaring above the alpine wildlands and into the Vale Capital City, and was finally on the last airship of her journey, less than an hour away from her goal: Beacon Academy.

It would have been much easier to attend her native Mistralian institution; Satya had graduated near the top of her class from the local Sanctum Combat School, and her older sister was already established at Haven Academy. More than anything else, Satya would miss the familiarity of home; new and strange were not concepts the dark-skinned seventeen year old dealt with lightly.

However, while the young huntress had well established boundaries around her comfort zone, she was not attending combat schools for the comfort. She wished to hone her skills to perfection, and then use those skills to bring order to a world sorely in need of it. And there was no finer institution for the martial arts than Beacon - staffed by the finest huntsmen and huntresses in the world, the handful skilled or clever enough to truly grow old in their profession, and run by the legendary Professor Ozpin, the greatest prodigy of a generation.

If she was being honest with herself, Satya had yet to see anything particularly impressive of Vale and Beacon.

True, her prospective classmates appeared to be an eclectic rabble of overdressed madmen, but her years at Sanctum taught Satya that this was fairly standard for monster-hunters in training. While there were some, like her, that entertained dreams of a Remnant made peaceful, harmonious and free from the predations of the creatures of Grimm, many more were adrenaline junkies, turning their love of extravagant weapons and fighting styles towards a productive end. Satya had long since made her peace with sharing her career with such people. With any luck, her skill and dedication would see her made a team leader, and teach some amount of dignity and propriety to those under her command.

No, what first made the Mistrali question Beacon's storied reputation, was the fact that the Academy's dedicated airship did not have any chairs on the passenger decks.

Nobody she had seen questioned the... lacking design choice, and few seemed to mind; her peers were mostly standing in small groups, leaning against the railing, or sitting on the floor without complaint. Satya did not begrudge them this, for they had no other seating options - but she did. It was but a moment's focus, and a pulse of aura, and a faintly glowing field of light-blue coalesced beside her, shifting and solidifying into a makeshift stool.

This was Satya's semblance; not the spontaneous generation of stools, but the ability to project her aura, the very energy of her soul, outwards from her body and into a solid shape. In combat, she could make a formidable barrier, or the devastating whip she favoured, or any reasonably simple shape. Today, she made a reasonably comfortable chair.

Satya had no friends yet to share the journey with; attending schools in other kingdoms was common practice, and she certainly recognised several faces from Sanctum, but without the team system imposed by the Academies Satya had focused more on training than socialising. So she enjoyed the view in solitude, gazing out the window and across the streets of Vale, and the approaching cliff that separated Beacon from the city.

As the ship slowly crested the precipice, Satya momentarily lost control - her eyes widened slightly, and a barely audible gasp escaped her lips.

Beacon was a magnificent sight. The surrounding forests had been cleared out, to keep any Grimm from wandering right onto the grounds, leaving hundreds of meters of rolling grassy fields, dotted with the occasional garden. A handful of rivers cut across the expanse, brilliant blue cutting against the landscape before tumbling off the cliff-side and into the lagoon below. The academy itself looked like a castle from a fairy tale, a distinctly gothic style of graceful arches and jagged steeples growing taller as one approached the centre of the grounds. Right in the middle was Beacon Tower itself, the heavily guarded heart of communication in the kingdom. At the peak of the tower, the highest point in the school, an emerald-green glow was visible even in the afternoon light, the illumination lending the school its name.

Satya had seen Haven Academy a few times while visiting her sister. While the mountaintop campus was certainly beautiful, it could not hold a candle to the majesty, the sheer feeling of gravitas that this place radiated in its every facet. In that one panorama, all of Satya's doubts about the prestige of Beacon and its inhabitants melted away.

And then some idiot in a breastplate threw up on her.

* * *

Two young men stood in Beacon's courtyard, enjoying the late summer sun as they watched the airship coast towards the academy's cliff-side dock, escorted by a pair of Bullhead gunships. The larger passenger transport drifted sideways up to the berth, its vast wings pivoting straight downward so the hull could sit flush with the precipice.

"Say, if those wings ain't for creatin' lift, whad'ya reckon they ARE for?" the taller of the pair pondered.

"What are you talking about Jesse?" the other figure asked with a resigned sigh, eyeing the ramp that extended from the ship.

"Well, Hanzo, the wings were waving about in flight, and even now when they're pointin' straight down, the whole thing is still floating. 'Sides, even if the wings were fixed, seems those big ships move too slowly for airfoils to function anyway." Jesse explained.

"Astounding: you know how aerofoils create lift, and yet you don't know that modern airships are held up by gravity dust?" Hanzo teased his companion lightly, while scanning the crowd that was filling the courtyard and steadily moving towards the pair.

"Oh I know, partner. That's my issue; if them wings ain't for keeping the ship afloat, why does it have any? Old fixed-wing craft used to store fuel and cargo in the wings, but what with the whole moving about part, even that wouldn't be safe." Jesse removed his wide brimmed hat and rubbed a hand through his shaggy hair to emphasize his confusion.

"Now that I'm thinking about it, the design does seem rather questionable." Hanzo conceded with a nod.

"Speaking of questionable designs, I think I see your brother."

At that proclamation, Hanzo followed Jesse's line of sight, and it didn't take long to see what had brought about that statement. His younger brother was indeed heading towards them purposefully, and Hanzo took a moment to take in his sibling's chosen combat outfit. A white vest and trousers would allow for an excellent range of motion, coupled with decorated bracers and knee-high boots for a bit of armour. His signature green-edged katana hung across his back, and Hanzo saw that his brother had also acquired a tanto at some point. An orange scarf added a much-needed splash of colour, and complimented the patterns on his bracers nicely. What really drew Hanzo's eye, however, was his brother's spike, _jade-green_ hair.

"Genji, you look like an anime character." Hanzo said once his brother was in earshot.

"Naw, he looks like an anime fan tried to make an anime character." Jesse argued, although Hanzo wasn't quite sure what the difference was.

"Hey, I am not taking fashion advice from a cowboy cosplayer." Genji defended himself to the older student.

"And what about from your older brother?" Hanzo inquired.

Genji and Jesse shared a look, eyebrows quirked.

"Hard no." They intoned in perfect harmony.

Hanzo huffed at that. Realistically, his own clothes was very similar to Genji's, though his top was dark blue and he had forgone bracers in favour of a single large pauldron on his right shoulder. Jesse, however, was indeed dressed like a cowboy: worn stetson hat, red-orange poncho, even spurs on the heels of his leather boots.

"So, brother, are you going to tell me the secrets of Beacon's initiation?" Genji asked hopefully.

"No." Hanzo replied glibly.

"Well, in that case, I'm gonna go hang with my friends from Signal. You know, actual cool people."

Hanzo might have snarked back, but his younger brother had already vanished back into the crowd. He let out a defeated sigh instead.

"... You always tell me I look good, Jesse." Hanzo half asked, half stated.

"Yeah, but I ain't talking about your clothes." Jesse said with the most punchable smirk Hanzo had ever seen.

* * *

"So did your brother tell you anything about the initiation?"

"No." Genji said with a laboured sigh. "I guess it would be _dishonourable_ to reveal Beacon's secrets."

"Maybe we have to fight a Grimm?" Winston suggested. "You know, an usra or something, just to make sure we can handle the basic stuff."

Compared to some of their prospective classmates, Harold Winston didn't exactly cut the most impressive of figures; thin, but not quite tall or lean enough to be described as gangly, though he certainly wasn't muscular either. His short brown hair and square-rimmed glasses lacked the individualistic flair most young huntsmen preferred, and the fact that his combat attire was a lab coat was downright incongruous to look at. Genji and the others knew better, though; the coat was infused with lightning and gravity dust. While many heavy dust users employed the quasi-magical substance in long ranged support roles, Winston used his to wade right into the thick of combat, Nature's Wrath giving force and fury to his blows. It was entirely at odds with the teenager's meek persona, and frankly quite terrifying to watch, Genji had to admit.

"Ooh, maybe we'll fight each other!" Mei exclaimed, a look of glee overtaking her features. "Like a tournament; lose too many fights and you fail!"

Like Winston, Mei was also a specialist in dust-based combat, though of the more traditional variety; a handheld launcher, affectionately named 'Snowball', spewed ice dust to create cover and ensnare her foes.

"It'll be more than just a fight." The final member of the informal group, one Yang Xiao Long, spoke up. The other three turned their attention to the blonde brawler, who up until then had seemed rather distracted, sweeping her gaze across the crowd of fresh students.

"Well, I mean, we all had plenty of fights at Signal, and there was a spar just for the right to come here and try the initiation, right?" Yang continued, still keeping half an eye on their surroundings - _likely looking for her sister_ , Genji realised. He had spoken a few times with his friend's half-sister Ruby, and had been surprised to hear the younger girl had been accepted into Beacon early.

"So you think the initiation is about more than just raw combat skills?" Genji asked.

"Yeah, there must be something Beacon wants to test, that they can't just get from our school transcripts."

"Someone told me we get thrown of the cliffs into the Emerald Forest." Mei spoke up. "That we have to survive and find our way back to the school."

"I get the wilderness-survival bit, that'd be cool," Winston agreed tentatively, "but throwing us off a cliff? Even with aura, that's a bit much to drop on us without warning. The professors will want to weed out the weaker applicants, not liquefy them."

"The weak die, the strong live." Mei quoted the Bandit Queen of Mistral, a dark chuckle escaping her as Yang and Genji laughed while Winston paled.

* * *

Despite arriving at Beacon two days early, and having short-ranged teleportation as the special power that manifested from her very soul, Lena was running late. In fairness though, it wasn't her fault; the girl had made herself at home in the infirmary, since the student dorms weren't quite ready yet, and Doctor Amari had left her alone there several hours before. Thus Lena was caught quite off-guard when the academy's intercom had announced that all first year students were to gather in the amphitheater, and the poor girl had no idea where that actually was.

It had taken her several minutes just to find her way out of the building that housed the sick-bay. Between her exhaustion from recovery, and the fact that the school had been largely deserted until that afternoon, Lena hadn't actually bothered to explore her surroundings at all, and once she reached the outside Beacon turned out to be a sprawling labyrinth of dormitories, lecture halls, training area, and many other things that were not the amphitheater. On a hunch, Lena wove her way inwards, to the landmark that was Beacon Tower, but that turned out to be a bust as well, and now she had only minutes to spare before missing the headmaster's briefing.

A flicker of motion caught Lena's eye, and she blinked towards it, her semblance allowing her to flow across the intervening space as quick as, well, a blink. Sliding back into reality, Lena threw herself around the corner of some building, desperate to catch what she hoped was another person. What she had not accounted for was that the individual she was tracking was _just_ around that bend, which Lena herself was now rounding at full, aura-empowered speed.

A few seconds of whirling confusion followed, with the end result of Lena being on the ground, but thankfully her landing had been soft. Soft, and with a pleasant, heady scent, and breathing. Lena opened her eyes.

Another pair of eyes met hers, from below. Amber eyes, set into a fair face with a smattering of freckles, and surrounded by rolling waves of coppery hair.

 _You're the most beautiful girl I've ever fallen on_ , Lena commented internally.

The other girls eyes, previously somewhat dazed, widened precariously.

"...That was out loud, wasn't it?" Lena asked hesitantly.

"Lil' bit, yeah." the other girl agreed.

"I AM _SO_ SORRY!" Lena screamed, blinking a short distance away, before walking back to the girl on the ground and hesitantly offering her a hand. "I'm lost and I'm late and I'm still on painkillers and... and I'm sorry."

"... painkillers? No, nevermind." The girl took Lena's hand and allowed herself to be hauled back upright. The redhead dusted herself down, then smiled at her mixed assailant/helper. "Cheers love."

If the other girl saw Lena's blooming blush, she made no comment. "So, what's the rush?" she asked after a moment.

"I'm lost, I need to get to the hall for Ozpin's speech."

Without saying anything, the other girl slowly pointed beside the pair, to where Lena saw an open set of double doors, through which several teenagers were watching the proceedings with barely suppressed laughter. Lena took some minuscule solace in the fact that they weren't late after all, the briefing clearly not underway.

"Thanks." Lena said after taking a deep, calming breath. "And yeah, sorry about before."

"It's fine. I take it you're a new student, like me?"

"Yeah, I am." Lena stood taller, puffed her chest out, and hiked a falsely confident thumb's up. "My name's Eleanor Oxton, but my friends call me 'Lena'." she proclaimed proudly.

"Oh, so we're just friends now?" the redhead asked in a voice that sounded like honey, before bursting into a fit of cackles at the flustered look that overtook Lena.

"Sorry, I'm a bit of a tease. But my friends call me Emily."

* * *

 **Author's Notes: In today's episode: many new, familiar faces, stronger ties to the RWBY universe, and a surprise guest! I'd love to tell you guys that Emily/Tracer and McHanzo is the extent to the shipping but IT ISN'T! This whole thing is me shipping Overwatch/RWBY, that's like two whole fleets of ships, AND I'M THE ADMIRAL NOW!**

 **/cough/ Excuse me. There'll be het ships too, and it won't be a massive part of the narrative, but given the material I'm working with, there's gonna be some ships.**

 **More to the point, I envision Tracer as this story's Ruby - in case anyone missed the parallels in chapter 1 - and I saw no reason to ignore the fact that she has a canon partner, especially one with so much ambiguity I can play with.**

 **A few points of order:**

 **Prosthetic limbs may be canon in RWBY, but they're clearly a lot more rare than Overwatch, where robot arms are seemingly given out like candy. Unless explicitly mentioned, readers can assume the majority of the cast do NOT have the prostheses they have in-game.**

 **Chapters this long, and in this style, will not be the norm. I don't want to take too long introducing everyone, but I also want to give each a little time to shine, hence the POV-roulette. One more chapter in this format, and then all the major players should be on the board and we can get a bit of plot rolling.**

 **On the inclusion of Yang, and other RWBY characters: it'll happen, but they won't play a major part in the narrative, it'll just be when I see a reason to have them in a scene. As an example of my reasoning, this fic is about using OW characters to fix the fact that there are like 10 students at Beacon. Since Yang's 'friends' from the second episode are never seen or mentioned ever again ever, I figured it wouldn't hurt to just say it was these guys.**

 **Now into the swing of college, I can safely say weekly updates are NOT realistic. This will be worked on when I get time.**

 **[Names and Skins]**

 **Mercy (Angela Ziegler) - Combat Medic... for now * _muwahahahahahahaha*_**

 **Symmetra (Satya Vaswani** **) - Classic**

 **Hanzo Shimdada - Young Master**

 **McCree (Jesse McCree) - Classic, but younger (i.e. not beard)**

 **Winston (Harold Winston) - Not a gorilla. See in-text description, but it's basically a young version of the scientist from the Recall short**

 **Mei (Mei-Ling Zhou) - Chang'e**


	5. Expectations

"That was... not what I would expect." Satya said after the headmaster concluded his speech, and the burble of conversation seeped back into the hall.

"Wise words, though perhaps given somewhat bluntly." Her companion commented in neutral tones.

Zenyatta's calm, measured mannerisms pervaded that young man's every action. Hardly surprising; his clothing reflected his heritage among the monks of the mountains north of Mistral City. He wore a loose orange robe, tied at the waist with a maroon sash, and handcrafted wooden sandals. Every morning his head was shaved completely, and then a square of nine pale blue dots were painted onto his forehead. Around his neck hung a loop of oversized carved metal spheres. To an onlooker, it might seem a sole concession to vanity, but Satya knew the beads were in fact his weapon of choice. While Zenyatta had never explained the mechanics of his semblance to her, Satya did know it allowed him to control the beads, slinging them at foes as they orbited around him.

A fellow graduate of Sanctum, he and Satya were familiar, but not particularly close. Satya wouldn't describe anyone besides her sister as 'close'. Still, she held a certain respect for her current companion's adherence to a polite and studious behaviour. Even in spars, his aura of tranquility had never broken, to her knowledge. In truth, she had approached Zenyatta with the hopes of discussing future team possibilities. Even with the implicit authority her leader role would convey, having a known and reliable figure as her majordomo would make imposing order on her team a much more simple task.

But that didn't mean she agreed with him right then.

"It was nonsense, Zen! First we lack direction, but then he turns around and says we need to direct ourselves." Satya huffed. "What wisdom is there in contradicting oneself?"

"You must remember, Professor Ozpin has decades of experience that we lack." Zenyatta argued, but with no heat in his voice. "You inability to decipher his message does not mean there was no message. Nor does it indicate any failing on your part; it is simply a difference of perspective."

"Okay, how did you interpret what he said then? What wisdom did you see?"

"I saw a very busy headmaster giving a perfunctory greeting to new students. The speech itself was less important than identifying himself as a figure of authority."

"So now you agree the speech was nonsense?" Satya asked with a skeptical eyebrow-arch.

"I merely suggest you are hindering yourself by demanding depth of a shallow pool. If you always insist on reading between the lines, you might miss what is written on the page."

Satya froze, both eyebrows now reaching for the sky. _Did Zenyatta just **sass** me? Without even being rude?_

"Perhaps I am over-analysing." Satya relented after a few moments.

"Come on, let's go to the ballroom," Zenyatta changed track completely, taking Satya by surprise, "we'll find a good place to sleep before things get too hectic."

Satya allowed a smile to grace her features. Zenyatta knew her well enough to know the crowds of strangers were unnerving; the young man was actually trying to make her more comfortable, and she knew his reasoning was purely altruistic. Despite his unconventional sensibilities, Satya was genuinely beginning to look forward to sharing a team with Zenyatta.

* * *

"So are you just following me around now?" Emily asked, lying on the ballroom floor in her sleeping bag.

"I just wanted to apologise, you know, for running into you." Lena stammered from where she sat a few metres away.

Emily rolled into her side to study the young woman, a smirk forming as she spied the brunette doing some studying of her own.

"You apologised four hours ago." Emily pointed out, drawing Lena's attention back to her face.

"W-well, I... _sigh_... do you want me to leave you alone?" Lena still managed to be timid, despite the several hours the girls had now spent virtually side by side.

Emily pretended to think for a moment, as her counterpart began to sweat. "Nah, I'm just making conversation. I like to get to know people before I sleep with them."

Emily greatly enjoyed the way Lena's mind visibly derailed, the brunette's face going slack for a few moments before she remembered where they were.

"Oh, yeah sure." Lena rejoined the conversation, but her face was still visibly flushed. "Well, I'm from Mistral City, went to Sanctum and all that, but I wanted to see the world a bit, so I decided to study here in Beacon."

"Cool, I'm from Mistral too, pretty much the same reason for being here as well."

"That's awesome!" Lena exclaimed, her eyes widening under the yellow goggles she seemed to be perpetually wearing. "Were you at Sanctum as well then?"

It was a valid question; Sanctum was by far the largest entry-level Combat School on Remnant, and for the naturally adventure-seeking huntsmen and huntresses, migrating to an Academy in another kingdom was extremely common.

"Nah, I grew up down south, near Kuchinashi. Got private training from a... family friend."

"Oh wow, that's so... so..." Lena trailed off, her mouth hanging open and her eyes staring somewhere over Emily's prone form. Emily frowned.

"Hey Lena, you alright love? Hey, Eleanor!"

Suddenly Lena was very much closer than she had been before, crouched down nearly nose-to-nose with Emily, who had to make a conscious effort to suppress her fight-or-flight instincts.

"Eleanor..." Emily began in low tones, only for the other girl to actually _shush_ her.

"There is an actual bunny girl, like, right behind you." Lena whispered breathlessly.

"... Really?" Emily replied, a single eyebrow now arched in a way that could make a civil engineer weep.

"Yup, within earshot." A new, somewhat nasally voice replied from behind Emily.

The new arrival was short and rail-thin, thin enough to be notable even beneath the hot pink onsie she wore, with a matching sleeping-bag slung under her arm. Her uncovered head showed chocolate brown hair cut quite short, and indeed, long whiskers sprouting from her cheeks.

"Sorry about my friend," Emily sat up to address the stranger, "she tends to just blurt out when she thinks someone's cute."

" _ONE TIME!_ " Lena screeched indignantly.

"Twice." Emily corrected her, deadpan, before turning back to the rabbit-girl. "Ignore her. I promise it's got nothing to do with being a faunus. At least, nothing negative."

The faunus brought her free hand up to massage her forehead, her whiskers quivering adorably as she scowled.

"Whatever." The faunus decided. "Look, this place is filling up fast, mind if I take this spot?" She indicated the free stretch of floor on the far side of Emily from Tracer.

"Sure." Emily said without hesitation, not wanting to even imply any dislike for faunuskind, before a dangerous smile spread across her freckled face. "You're not worried Lena will jump you in your sleep?"

"Should I be?" the rabbit-girl asked with narrowed eyes. Emily and Lena looked at each other for a few moments.

"Probably." They agreed in harmony.

"... whatever." the faunus said again, throwing her bag down on the ground, before promptly collapsing to lie on the bare wooden floor, the still rolled bag serving only as a pillow.

"My name's Eleanor Oxton, by the way." Tracer called hesitantly to their new companion. "My friends call be Lena."

"Do they now?" the faunus was muffled slightly, her face pressed into the sleeping bag.

"So I've heard." Emily agreed lightly. "I'm Emily."

There was no response for a while, just long enough for Emily and Lena to assume the girl was ignoring them, before another muffled statement crept out from the newcomer.

"Hana. Hana Scarlatina."

* * *

"Hmmm... you look awfully familiar." Jamison Fawkes stated as he took a seat in Beacon's dining hall the next morning.

The gangly teen squinted as he examined the person he had recognised, while she scowled back, taking in his untamed, mousy-blonde hair, wild eyes, fur-covered tail, and slightly singed shorts and shirt combo. She sighed.

"Junkrat, we were in the same classes at Eclipse for five years." Hana replied tiredly. For her part, she had changed out of her sleepwear, and into a white crop-top and leather vest combo, and moss-green trousers reinforced with fitted leather panels along the thighs.

After nearly half a minute of scrutiny, Jamison 'Junkrat' Fawkes's eyes widened in recognition.

"Oh right, Haley, from back in Vacuo! Sure, now I see it!"

"It's Hana, and please-" Junkrat cut her off with a yell.

"Hey Roady, check it out! Heather's here to!"

"Ugh, forget it." Hana muttered under her breath, and watched as an extremely rotund young man with tusks protruding from his jaw lumbered over to their table.

"Mornin' Hana." the behemoth said with a wave.

"Hey Mako. How's it going?"

"Bit bored, really." Mako, aka 'Roadhog' to Junkrat and no one else, grunted as he took a seat beside his best friend. "Lookin' forward to killin' some Grimm today, it's been a looooooong summer."

"Aw yeah, initiation!" Junkrat interjected, the gleam in his eye somehow becoming even more manic. "Oi Helen, you oughta try and team up with us; we've gotta stick together here!"

"... You mean people from Eclipse?" Hana ventured, referring to Vacuo's premiere Combat School.

"Naw, I mean us faunus." Junkrat corrected, though in truth Hana knew he had meant _that_. "Look around you, how many of us can you see here?"

Hana did look around, and though not every student was in the dining hall just yet, the point was clear. Even the night before, with the whole cohort in one place, she had only noted herself and the pair now sitting with her. Junkrat continued when it was clear she wouldn't concede the point.

"There's only four faunus students in this whole year, and there's four students to a team. Imagine if we got all of us together."

"Wait, four? Who's the last one?" Hana asked, taking a sip of her juice for comedic purposes.

"That girl over there is Blake Belladonna."

Hana spat out her juice in surprise, splattering an oddly unfased Jamison.

"I... I don't think she's a faunus..." Hana examined the girl Junkrat had indicated, a dark haired figure with a large bow in her hair, but no obvious animalistic traits.

"Yeah, I told you last night, it's just someone with the same name Jamie." Mako agreed wearily.

"Naw, I've read my history I have." Junkrat said proudly, crossing his arms. "The Belladonnas are the top cats in Menagerie, chiefs of the whole faunus nation. And they have a daughter named Blake."

It was a compelling argument, but for the one problem.

"That Blake is a known member of the White Fang." Hana pointed out slowly.

"Aw shit, really?" Junkrat looked rightly alarmed.

"She's a terrorist." Mako added, and Junkrat looked at the oblivious subject of their discussion with something like terror.

"Should we, uh, tell the teachers or somethin'? Or the army?" Junkrat asked in a stage whisper.

"It's _not_ the same girl Jamison."

Junkrat looked between the girl and his two companions a few times, before shaking his head and schooling his features into a slightly less crazed expression.

"Aww phooey, I guess it's just us three then."

* * *

Elsewhere, in Beacon's rocket-locker room, Fareeha Amari froze as she felt an unexplained shiver run down her spine. When nothing appeared to explain her sudden sense of foreboding, she ignored the sensation, fluttering her hawk-like wings slightly and enjoying the feeling of the air flowing across her feathers.

"Are you alright, Fareeha?" Ana Amari asked, recognising the gesture as something the younger woman did when uncomfortable.

"I'm fine Mom." Fareeha replied as she twisted into her custom-made tactical vest, taking care to work it around the joints between her wings and her back. Tails and ears were easy traits to deal with, but everything Fareeha wore had to be specially designed. Still, it could be worse; the man she inherited her avian nature from possessed a beak, of all things.

"You have no reason to be nervous today, habibti." Ana pressed on, in the spirit of mothers everywhere ignoring the words 'I'm fine' from their children. "You alone know what the initiation is - not ideal, but unavoidable, growing up here - and you happen to have an easy way out of the worst part."

"I'm not worried, Mom." Fareeha groaned. Suddenly, she had a thought to distract her fussing mother - turnabout is fair play, after all. "You never did tell me Mom; what was _your_ landing strategy?"

"Ah, yes... well..." Distraction achieved, though Fareeha was concerned to see her mother actually looked sad as she struggled to find the words. "Gabriel... he caught me."

"Oh. I apologise mother-"

"It's nothing, habibti. It is a good memory." Ana's forlorn look switched to one of amusement a moment later. "Perhaps you will find your own pretty girl to save today?"

"MOOOOOOOM!" Fareeha whined, quickly checking their surroundings to confirm they were still alone.

Before any teasing could continue, a bell chimed through the air, and the older woman sighed with resignation.

"I had best go prepare the infirmary. I will be very busy tonight."

"So from now on, do I have to call you 'Doctor Amari'?" Fareeha asked, partly to take both their minds of the inevitable prospect of injured children, that might well include her.

"Haha, no. Thank the stars I am not teaching anymore. I get to focus on looking after _all_ my little children."

With a nod, Fareeha withdrew her hand-crafted crossbow, Senu, out of her rocket locker, ready for whatever the day might bring.

"Oh, and Fareeha?" Ana asked from behind her, and Fareeha turned to find herself engulfed in a hug. "Good luck, habibti."

The scarred woman gently squeezed her daughter, and the winged woman gladly returned the embrace.

* * *

"Hey, Zarya?"

"What is it Lucio?"

"Do you ever feel like we're just supporting characters in someone else's story?"

"What are you talking about this time?"

"It's just, I feel like, we're in our last year at Beacon now, and it feels like nothing important has happened yet."

"What did you expect to happen Lucio?"

"You know, adventure, drama, trilling heroics..."

"Maybe you should have spent more time training and hunting, and less time spouting philosophy."

"I'm serious Zarya. By this time next year, everything will be different and... I don't know if we're ready."

"... Ready for what, exactly?"

"I don't know that either. And that's even scarier."

A few moments passed in silence.

"If a book were written about Beacon, you would not be the main character."

"Okay Zarya, that's just harsh. True, but-"

" _But_ , in a book written about Lucio, then you are the main character. If you are not happy with your story, keep writing."

"... Heh, now who's waxing philosophy?"

"For that, we will go spar now. You want excitement: I will hit you."

* * *

 **Author's Notes: I know the last chapter was like two days ago and I said these won't be posted regularly but I can't sleep and this all just sorta happened at once and I'm okay with that cause I've really been itching to get these introductory chapters out of the way.**

 **And that's the core cast of Beacon students introduced! Onward to initiation, teams, and OTHER THINGS. I know that's not everybody done yet, but rest assured I have plans for _almost_ every current hero. Bastion is weird, I have ideas for them, but nothing set in stone. For everyone else, they will show up eventually, but I have the plot in broad strokes set out all the way into Volume 4, and at least a couple may only be introduced that far along. I am sorry if your favourite character isn't in the frontline group of regulars, and/or won't show up for a while, but I did have to craft an actual narrative out of this sleep-deprived nonsense, and introducing new characters is a great way to keep things dynamic.**

 **Just in case it makes or breaks the story for anyone, Torbjorn and Moira are appearing (relatively) soon, everyone else who hasn't showed up yet is Volume 2 at least. That means Bastion, Brigette, Orisa, Reinhardt, Widowmaker, and anyone announced after the time of writing.**

 **On the topic of names again. Early readers will note a slight retcon, originally Tracer's name here was 'Elena', and Tracer was the nickname. Now Tracer is fine as a call-sign, however, while writing her scene, I could not take Tracer seriously as a nickname used among school kids. So I changed it to Lena being the nickname, and came up with Eleanor to preserve the 'E' I'll need in team naming. I didn't want her casual name to _just_ be Elena, since it looks very similar to Emily and that won't read well when they share so many scenes. Yeah, how character names look in relation to each other is a thing I actually fuss over.**

 **Also names, DON'T PANIC Hana is not replacing Velvet, everyone that exists in RWBY canon exists here too, whether or not they actually appear in this fic. My headcanon is they're distant cousins, since I couldn't pass up the chance to make Hana a rabbit faunus and the name was already there. I also can't use D dot Va at all, since this site deletes anything it thinks might be a URL.**

 **There will be more links to the RWBY cast like Hana's, but they will be infrequent, and the relations won't be particularly close. I don't want to break the lore when Weiss gets her annual new sibling revealed.**

 **So about RWBY for a moment, I really like Blake's story and character development, but the reveal that her dad started the White Fang raises... questions. Questions like how in the hell does Weiss gorram Schnee not know that name?! With Blake's skills and now her background, there is no canon where she was not literally the postergirl for the modern Fang.**

 **Ahh Pharah. I am SOOO glad I got to make you a hawk-faunus. When I first started this story, that was not the case, and I was struggling to reconcile the fact that she might need straight-up power armour, which is a thing we haven't seen anywhere in RWBY. Thankfully Volume 5 really opened up what kind of traits faunus could have, I figure if Yuma's bat-wings are fine, hawk-wings are too. Side note, for reasons that cannot be adequately explained, something called the 'Hawk of Justice' has become a meme among my student-teacher cohort. So there's that.**

 **Please excuse the weirdness that was Zarya and Lucio. I couldn't think of a natural way to fit them in this part of the narrative, so I went for something a bit more esoteric. In Lucio's case, I really identify with his personality, so he's what I would call the author surrogate; his opening question is something I have spent far too many late nights reflecting on.**

 **Gods, this AN is going to be longer than the chapter. This fic is an exercise in world-building for me, all this stuff is for posterity so I remember I own logic in my narrative decisions. If anyone wants to talk more about this kind of stuff, or ask non-spoilery questions, feel free to drop a review!**

 **Top marks for anyone who spots the reference to Coeur al'Aran's _Professor Arc_ , the masterful fic that inspired me both to seriously try writing, and to become a teacher, and is quite frankly probably my favourite piece of literature, like, ever. Literally changed my life kinda deal.**

 **[Names and Skins]**

 **Zenyatta (Tekhartha Zenyatta) - Human version of Classic**

 **D dot Va (Hana Scarlatina) - Junker; it fit the Mad Max headcanon I have for Vacuo's faunus community**

 **Junkrat (Jamison Fawkes) - Classic with a tail, maybe puts on a damn shirt?**

 **Roadhog (Mako Rutledge) - Classic without mask, boar tusks, shirt(?)**

 **Pharah (Fareeha Amari) - No existing skin. See in-text description**

 **Lucio (Lucio Coal) - Classic**

 **Zarya (Alexandra Zaryanova) - Classic**


	6. Partner-Ships

No matter what everyone else thought, Satya was becoming more and more convinced that Professor Ozpin was an unreasonable headmaster.

First, he had gathered all the new entrants - about fifty students - at the cliffs overlooking the Emerald Forest, and told them initiation would be held within said forest. Reasonable. He told them the results of the day would determine their teams while at Beacon. Also reasonable. He then said that their partners, arguably the most important person in a trainee-hunter's life for the next four years, would be the first person they made eye contact with.

This was not reasonable.

Without offering any defense for the insane policy, Ozpin moved on to explain the goal of the day's activity: find a ruined temple within the forest, retrieve an artifact from the ruin, and return to their current location with the artifact, and a partner. It would test not only their combat prowess- the forest being allowed to maintain a population of weaker grimm for trainees to hunt for practice - but also their teamwork and survival skills. All things considered, a good bar to set for prospective students.

They would, however, be entering the forest via catapulting plates built into the precipice overlooking the verdant expanse below.

 _Okay, what the hell, Beacon?_ Satya seethed internally, moments before she was flung gracefully into the air, hundreds of metres above the trees.

 _"You will be using your own landing strategy."_ Ozpin had told the assembled teenagers, apparently not giving a damn about the fact that surviving free-fall was in no way a part of their prior education. The descent was too far to rely on aura for protection. Even if Satya aimed for the leafy canopy, a sturdy, unseen branch could easily impale her.

Thinking quickly, the Mistrali called upon her semblance to summon two ribbons of sky-blue light, extending from each hand, and cast them down towards the rapidly approaching treetops. By some good fortune, both whips successfully wrapped around the branches below, and Satya pulled them taut, turning them - and herself - into a makeshift swing.

As she dipped below the treeline, the tension began to pull her back upwards, and Satya felt her fall slow as vertical speed bled off into horizontal. At the nadir of her inverted arc, Satya released the semblance keeping her ribbons of aura solid, the twin shimmering threads dissipating in an instant. She hit the ground in an acrobatic roll, her aura flaring as it absorbed the impact, but not breaking.

Satya continued the roll until it brought her back to her feet, and after checking her immediate surroundings for danger, she allowed herself a moment to calm her breathing and heartbeat.

 _Right, that is the difficult part over with,_ the young woman thought to herself, _step 2: find a suitable partner. Step 3: fight my way through a monster-infested forest_.

* * *

Lena darted through the forest, dashing from tree to tree in between blinks. Finding a partner was Lena's top priority. Sure, initiation was important on its own, but by the end she needed someone to stand by her side for the next four years of her training. Sure, she would have a whole team as well, and as far as friends were concerned the more the merrier in her mind, but a huntress's partner was something different. It was a bond of trust that could only be forged when putting your lives in each other's hands was not only possible, but routine.

Lena ran through the short list of people she had already met.

 _Okay, so there's the folks from Sanctum; I saw Vaswani here, she's hard to talk to, but she'd make a great study partner, and her aura-constructs are super cool. I think that tournament champion, Nikos, is meant to be at Beacon too. It'd be weird having a famous partner, but I bet she could teach me loads of cool moves. Zen's here as well, he was always super cool to just chill out with, and it might be easier if I have a partner that I definitely won't fall in love with._

 _Speaking of, I wouldn't mind sharing a room with Emily for four years... nope, focus Lena, it's about how well you fight together. I guess there was that girl from last night too, don't really know much about Hana. She did take off super early without us, so maybe not._

And that, Lena was surprised to find, was the end of her list of Beacon acquaintances. There were a couple of other Sanctum students she knew by face, if not name, but realistically she was most likely to run into a complete stranger before anything else.

 _Stupid ridiculous eye-contact rules. Of all the things to leave to chance!_

Cursing Ozpin internally, Lena forgot one of the most basic rules: pay attention to one's surroundings. Her first warning that she was coming up to a steep drop was when she was already tumbling down the ravine. Unable to focus on a location to blink to, Lena remembered her training and went limp, allowing her aura to tank the impacts as she bounced downhill.

When Lena's world stopped spinning, she lifted her head from where she lay, and found herself staring at a pair of very confused ursai.

The usra was a fairly common variety of grimm - the body shape of a bear, but like all grimm they were pitch black, but for bony protrusions and a skull-like mask adorned with flowing red engravings. Normally even a young huntress wouldn't have much trouble with an ursa, but lying right between two of them on her back was a different story. The one thing true of all grimm was that they would never ignore a human target, and it took only a moment for their pupil-less, yellow-red eyes to morph from surprise to fury. Before she even tried to rise, Lena unfolded Phase and Pulse

The closest reaching towards Lena with one massive paw, more probing than an attack, but the huntress lashed out with Phase's backwards-curved blade, slashing before the clawed appendage could get too close.

The beast to her left reared up and roared, but before it could descend on her Lena aimed the gun portion of Pulse and unleashed a burst of Dust-rounds into its unprotected belly, the attack sending it staggering backward.

Still on the ground, Lena was about to blink away - though she was confident with her weapons' built in blades, an ursa's sheer bulk made it something best dealt with from a distance. Before she could summon her semblance, however, she was distracted by _pain_. A third usra, one she had not seen from her position, had brought its massive paw down on her leg, and while her aura prevented any scratches - or broken bones - the pain of the impact still coursed through her. She blindly sprayed with both barrels at the third beast, earning a roar, but also an easing of the pressure on her shin. She took the moment to summon her semblance again, focusing on a point outside the circle of monsters.

Lena felt the tension, the tightening that surrounded her as her semblance pulled her from one space to another. She felt the pressure build... then sputter, and fade away.

 _Crap, my aura must be lower than I thought. Shit..._

The relationship between aura and semblance is complicated. In theory, the protective barrier and the unique superpower were unrelated, but both drew from the same source of power - a living soul. It was the body's natural reaction to focus on the defensive aura - with practice, the two could be used independently, but for a trainee like Lena, low aura meant no semblance. No escape.

Still, Lena got to her feet. Her leg held her weight, but it still hurt, so she gritted her teeth. No huntress ever died lying down.

"HOLD ON!"

Unable to help herself, Lena looked at the source of the cry, though all three ursai paused to to the same. From the very ledge Lena had herself fallen down, she saw an actual angel descending. _Scratch that,_ Lena thought, it was just some blonde girl floating downwards on literal wings of light, carrying a metal staff. _Did I get a concussion?_ Lena wondered.

The girl landed on the shoulders of the nearest grimm. It reached up to swipe at her, but before it could, the girl hooked her staff under its jaw and _wrenched_. The ursa spasmed, then fell to the ground without so much as a groan, the girl gracefully rolling off of it. When she came to her feet, the girl held out an arm towards Lena - an arm engulfed in golden light. Lena suddenly felt her laboured breathing even out, and the pain in her leg faded. Looking down at herself, Lena saw her own orange aura flaring; not with damage, but with renewed power. In her confusion, Lena almost didn't catch the girl's next word.

"FIGHT!"

But catch it she did, and Lena turned with new energy to face the other two ursai. Other one, she corrected herself, seeing nothing more than a smoking corpse of the creature to her left.

 _When did that happen?_ Lena wondered for a moment, before turning her attention to the last beast. It had backed up now, crouched defensively on all fours, but Lena knew it wouldn't run away. Only very old grimm had the intellect to avoid a fight.

True to form, the ursa charged, and Lena waited a moment to let it build momentum before she moved. At the last possible moment, Lena pirouetted out of the way, angling one of her blades so the the grimm's momentum drove it deep into its shoulder. The weapon was torn out of her grasp, but Lena allowed it. The unexpected impediment caused the ursa to crash to the ground, sliding along the slick grass on its side. The wound wasn't deep enough to truly hurt it though, so before it had a chance to regain its footed, Lena blinked right on top of the beast, bringing her remaining gun up under its jaw and squeezing the trigger.

She didn't release until the clip ran empty, and the underside of the grimm's head was a pulpy mass of red and black. Just to be sure, Lena quickly hopped off and held Pulse in a guarding stance, until she could see the ursa's corpse begin to dissipate into black smoke. Another odd thing all grimm did. Only then did she walk up to retrieve her weapon, then turn to greet the angel girl.

"Cheers!" Lena said, walking up with a hand extended. The girl seemed slightly out of breath, leaning lightly on the staff; Lena suspected she knew why. "I'd have been dead without that aura boost."

"Nonsense, heroes never die." The blonde replied, chuckling to herself as though there were some inside joke. She took Lena's hand none the less, squeezing gently.

"Well I guess this makes us partners." Lena said with a toothy grin. "My name's Lena."

"Angela, and I'm afraid I'm already taken."

Lena quirked an eyebrow, and Angela simply pointed upwards. At first Lena scanned the top of the nearby slope, but then something in the treetops caught her eye.

It was a young woman, dark skinned, and somewhat familiar. When Lena noticed the tattoo the third girl had under one eye, the penny dropped; she was a dead ringer for a younger Doctor Amari. Well, almost, this girl also had a large pair of brown-feathered wings furled behind her back.

"Come on down Fareeha!" Angela called up at the faunus. Fareeha decided to drop to the ground without using her wings, and kept a complicated mechanical crossbow at the ready. When she saw Lena up close, the hawk-girl's eyes narrowed.

"I recognize you. You should be more careful; my mother doesn't like repeat customers."

"Doctor Amari's your mum?" Lena asked, earning a single, sharp nod. "Right, sorry, I will be. Shall we keep going then?" She asked into the ever-so-slightly awkward silence.

"That would be wise." Fareeha responded.

"Fareeha's been scouting above the treeline, we think the ruins are north of here." Angela added, and the pair of rescuers began walking in a direction Lena took to be north. Lena blinked to catch up with them. _It might not be a partner_ , she thought, _but at least I'm not alone._

* * *

"So you can give someone else extra aura?" Lena asked, a while later.

"No, my semblance lets me focus on someone and boost the energy output of their soul; increased aura regeneration, or a bump to their own semblance." Angela explained. "Like any semblance, is does tire me out, but not as quickly as a direct transfer."

"Wow, something like that would be great for support in a fight. AND you're tough enough to snap an ursa's neck! Anyone would be lucky to have you on their team!"

"Subtle, Lena," Angela chuckled angelically, "but you need to find your own partner first."

Lena's response was cut off when Fareeha, who was leading, stopped dead and held up a fist for them to do the same. Now that she focused, Lena could hear a rustling sound, like something scurrying through the brush, and it was getting closer.

Fareeha dropped to one knee and aimed her crossbow at the sound, while Lena pointed her dual machine-pistols over the faunus's crouched form. Angela stood back, staff held ready.

The source of the sound rounded a nearby tree, but it wasn't a grimm. It was a young woman, skin even darker than Fareeha's, and wearing a light-blue dress with deep slits cut up both sides, showing off her muscular legs. _Focus Lena._ All three girls lowered their weapons immediately.

"Hey their Satya." Lena greeted with a wave, after flipping Phase and Pulse back into her gauntlets. "So we're gonna be partners then!"

It could be worse. Satya honestly wasn't that bad, and at least Lena knew her. To her surprise, Satya's face lit up, her eyes widening and a genuine smile blooming. Not what Lena expected from the normally austere girl, but if Satya was happy with the partnership, then so was she!

"Sorry mate, she's taken."

The smile Satya wore didn't so much melt as shatter, and she seemed to shrink inwards as another figure walked into view and slung an oblivious arm around her shoulders. Lena didn't recognise Satya's partner; he was a gangly youth, with wild hair, wilder eyes, and a tail.

"G'day ladies. Name's Junkrat."

* * *

 **Author's Notes: Welcome to a chapter of bloody misdirection!**

 **This one was a lot of fun to write; we got some action, we got a lot of internal thoughts from out heroes, and we got a bit of my headcannon for how aura and semblance work. To clarify, from what the show has given us, I believe the two to be entirely separate things, linked only by the fact that both draw power from a person's soul. I have a fairly robust theory around the mechanics, but I won't go into it unless/until it affect the plot.**

 **So I made an important decision during the writing of this chapter. Originally, I was gonna try and write snips for everyone detailing how they met their partners, maybe even give everyone a landing scene. The fic would go on in roughly the style of chapters 4 & 5, rotating through the entire cast to see what they're up to at all times.**

 **This is no longer the case.**

 **When I started this fic more than a year ago, it was meant to be a slice-of-life style look at how the Overwatch heroes live and interact at Beacon. Thus the rotating snips model would have been perfect. Now though, I am more and more treating this as a narrative-centred fic, with comedy SoL elements on the side. As such, having all 27 as major characters just isn't feasible. Even the 12 I have as the core group of Beacon 1st years is too many. So for narrative sections of this fic, from now on Lena's team will be the focus - not exclusively, but mostly, rather than trying to get everyone in on everything.**

 **As I indicated in the last chapter, if the reader want's everyone equally, or want's specific characters that I've relegated to the sidelines, I am sorry but this fic cannot cater to that. I simply do not have the time to write engaging storylines for almost thirty characters, so the majority will now only appear for the lighter skits, or when they have a specific reason to be included. Stuff like the partnerships, I can largely just say who the pairs are as Lena meets them and lose nothing from the plot.**

 **If it's any consolation, Talon and the professors will have a bit more to do - what this really is, is me saying that some of the _sixteen_ student characters will be less team JNPR and more team CFVY. And, way away in Volume 4 after the /SPOILER/ Fall of Beacon, there will be some more plot stuff for the minor characters, since slice of life bullshit will get kinda difficult after that.**

 **No new characters today. New characters tomorrow? Also probably no, I have like three assignments due on Friday. Sunday night releases (my time) seem doable for now if I just continue not sleeping. Last night I built a meter-long model of the Titanic, and when I was done I realised it was 3am. Also I start actual teaching practice in May and at that point literally anything could happen. And I turn 25 in a week. That number scares me. I should go to bed.**

 _ **/He says while opening three other tabs/**_


	7. Hunt

"Do you think she's telling the truth?" Professor Jack Morrison asked, gesturing to the screen that currently showed a live feed of the Emerald Forest, and three young huntresses currently undergoing their initiation into Beacon Academy.

"I've never heard of a semblance like that." Professor Moira O'Deorain replied. The lean redhead leaned in closer, examining one of the girls - the blue-clad blonde who had just claimed she could accelerate a person's natural aura regeneration. "An aura transfer is one thing, or a Dust infusion, but this? I have to admit Jack, I want it to be true. Think of what that girl could do for my research!"

"I appreciate that, professor, but miss Ziegler is a student first and foremost. Once she has acclimatised to Beacon, you and Ozpin can _discuss_ giving her the _option_ to run some tests."

"Calm down Jack, I'm not about to snatch the girl from her dorm-room." Moira chuckled darkly, only taking further enjoyment from Morrison's scowl. She savoured the expression before directing them both back to the display.

"Oh look, they've met up with Vaswani and Fawkes. There's a pair for the history books."

"They will be closely watched. Even if we ignore Fawkes'... extensive disciplinary record, he and Vaswani couldn't be further apart in the psyche profiles."

"It's times like this I wonder about the eye contact rule." Moira said with deliberately neutral tones. It was an old, well established argument among Beacon's staff. "In combat, one might think they're being set up to fail."

"Ozpin would say they're being set up to 'learn and grow'," Morrison countered tiredly, "but I'll still keep an eye on them. Maybe fudge the team comp for some balance, if Oz will let me."

"Hmm..." Moira let the old debate trail off, and changed tact; "What kind of faunus is Fawkes anyway?"

"Uh, a rat, isn't he? Call's himself 'Junkrat', and he's got the tail."

"His tail is furred." Moira pointed out.

"Well then I don't know, Moira." Jack said, with just a bit of heat. "Beacon doesn't keep that information on file. You're not in Atlas anymore."

"Simmer down Jackie, I'm just trying to make conversation. Maybe we can check up on the rest, see what other fun pairs are forming."

"Let's see..." Morrison began flicking through the various feeds they had at their disposal. "Winchester's crew grouped up immediately, wouldn't be surprised if they rigged it somehow. Nikos went straight for that Arc kid, I wonder if someone should tell her he faked his transcripts."

"I'm sure Ozpin saw something in the boy," Moira chided lightly, "and I can't wait to see what it is."

"I certainly hope so, for his sake if nothing else. Xiao Long's kid teamed up with Belladonna-"

"Wait, as in the White Fang Belladonnas?" Moira asked incredulously.

"Can't be. Even Ozpin wouldn't let one of those terrorists in, especially not with a Schnee here in the same year."

"Fair enough, but that is quite the coincidence." Moira conceded.

"Speaking of coincidence, looks like Schnee has actually gotten Xiao Long's _other_ daughter; the one Oz let in early."

"He let someone in early? I'm honestly starting to wonder if Professor Ozpin even reads the applications."

"He doesn't. Goodwitch does it for him. Anyway, last pair so far is Scarlatina and Zenyatta. They've gone through a few grimm already." Morrison summed up.

"Oh? They must fight well together."

Morrison called up a camera showing the Mistrali monk and the Vacuan faunus battling a small pack of creeps; bipedal lizard-grimm about the size of a large dog. Scarlatina easily circled around the pack, taking potshots with a handgun, while Zenyatta danced around their flanks. His arms and legs jabbed outward in a fashion that reminded Morrison of martial arts, but rather than connecting with his fists, the large metal orbs that circled around him followed his movements, impacting the creeps with bone-breaking force.

"Hmm..." Morrison muttered to himself. "Why isn't Scarlatina using her semblance?"

"Oh, another interesting one?" Moira inquired curiously.

"Another strange one. Though I think Professor Lindholm will want to see it..."

* * *

"We are being followed." Zenyatta said quietly.

"I know," Hana responded, also whispering, "it's probably just another student letting us deal with the grimm; otherwise, we'd have been attacked by now."

"Still, avoiding confrontation does not seem to be in the spirit of things, does it miss Scarlatina?"

"You thinking we should introduce ourselves?"

"It would only be polite, yes."

Zenyatta lowered himself into a combat stance, focusing squarely on a large tree off to one side of the path. He drew his arms back, his orbs flowing in response, and then thrust both fists out - upwards and to the left of where he was so intently looking.

"AARGH!"

The orb impacted solidly against the tree trunk, jostling the branches and sending a figure tumbling to the earth. Zenyatta and Hana took a leisurely stroll over to where the green-haired youth lay on the ground. The swordsman - for he carried both a katana and a shorter blade on his back - looked up at them with annoyance.

"Hmm... Genji Shimada, yes?" Zenyatta queried, earning a nod from the prone figure.

"You could have just said 'we know you're there' or something." He grumbled.

"A sneaky ninja dude wouldn't have answered." Hana pointed out.

"Well, clearly I'm not as 'sneaky' as I'd like to be." The young man at least had the self-awareness to sound embarrassed about his current situation.

"In that case, would you care to walk with us openly?" Zenyatta asked, holding out a hand to their stalker. Genji took it and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. "My name is Tekhartha Zenyatta, and my companion is miss Hana Scarlatina."

"The pleasure is mine." Genji's voice could not have contained more sarcasm. "I can't believe I was spotted by a monk and a-" Genji's eyes darted from Hana's own down to her whiskers, for a split-second, "... Vacuan."

Hana's annoyed gaze instantly coalesced into an icy glare.

"Well, your big dumb knives make a lot of noise." She bit out angrily.

"You also disturbed the branches as you moved between trees." Zenyatta concurred in a much more amiable tone.

"And your clothing stands out from the environment." Mako Rutledge added with a hint of amusement.

"WAAAH!"

All three initiates yelped and jumped backwards as they simultaneously noticed the overweight warthog faunus that had appeared in their midst.

"Where did you come from, fiend?!" Genji yelled, two hands on the hilt of his blade - one his own, ready to draw, the other Zenyatta's, ensuring he didn't.

"You got a partner, greenie?" Mako asked of the man who looked ready to assault him.

"No." Genji's answer was clipped, but a moment after he gave it, realisation dawned across his face. It did not look pleasant.

"Well congratulations. Name's Mako." the faunus extended a hand, but simply let it drop when Genji only continued staring in bemusement. "We should keep going, the ruins should be close."

"Indeed, mister Rutledge, time is of the essence." Zenyatta concurred, falling into step beside the large huntsman, leaving Hana and Genji in their wake.

"Hehe, hope you don't mind having a 'Vacuan' for a partner." Hana cajoled with a cat-like smirk, before jogging to catch up with their partners.

Genji could only sigh deeply, accept the situation for the farce it was, and hurry along behind the others.

* * *

Emily paused to catch her breath as the beowolves began to dissolve around her, the acrid black smoke from a half dozen lycanthropic bodies clotting the air.

Once she was sure none of the grimm would rise again, Emily stowed her twin pistols and checked the position of the Sun to reorient herself, before continuing through the forest.

For how close it was to the city of Vale, the Emerald Forest contained a very high number of grimm. This was only possible thanks to the vigilance of the staff at nearby Beacon Academy, who would step in and kill any monsters that grew too large for the forest to contain. It was a necessary compromise. Grimm could not be kept in captivity for more than a few days; they would either escape, killing anything in their path, or mysteriously expire if that proved impossible. At the same time, students at the academy needed something more substantial than sparring for practice, but sending them into the Grimmlands farther from the city was too dangerous in their first year.

So the creatures of grimm were allowed to fester in the forest, to an extent, with students' training hunts carefully monitored to maintain a safe level of grimm, however counter-intuitive that statement may have been. Exclusively young specimens of the more basic varieties, like creeps, beowolves, and ursai.

At least, that was the idea, as Emily understood it. Which was why the redheaded huntress was somewhat concerned when she came across a beringel sitting idly among the trees.

The overlarge ape-like creature, while not a serious problem for any trained huntress, was just across the border of what a first-year could reasonably be expected to deal with. A skilled trainee could best one with effort, but even an average initiate would likely die.

And Emily stared at it from the concealing underbrush, wondering if she should test her mettle.

It would be an impressive feat, but also a risky and, ultimately, pointless one. Even if one of the professors was watching her then, the best she could expect from felling the beringel would be a pat on the back. She decided to continue past the grimm.

Before Emily had left the grimm behind, however, both it and herself suddenly stiffened, and stared through the trees; not at each other, but to the east, and the unmistakable sound of voices.

The monstrous gorilla locked onto the source of the disturbance, and began to push its way through the trees, no thought in its mind but the finding and killing of humans.

After a moment's hesitation, Emily took off after it.

Between the other initiates and the beringel's own destructive path, it didn't hear the girl behind it, but the students up ahead certainly heard the grimm. Their indistinct talking became panicked yells, and Emily saw shards of ice explode against the grimm's chest and shoulders, likely from a Dust weapon.

She caught up to find the beringel already engaged in a brutal melee, a scrawny boy wearing an armoured lab-coat of all things incongruously matching it blow-for-blow, while a girl in an overly ornamental white suit fired frozen spikes from the sidelines. Whenever the boy touched the grimm - either to block or to hit back - his arms were wreathed in a brilliant purple lightning. It didn't look like the nebulous flare of aura, so Emily assumed his attacks were bolstered, by semblance or Dust she knew not.

Her pistols had been in her hands from the moment she first saw the beast, but rather than diving into the melee Emily carefully circled around to meet the other girl.

"Hey," she called out by way of greeting, "can your Dust gun make a freezing spray, or just the spikes?"

"Both." The girl answered, not taking her eyes of the monster for even a second.

"Good. Neither of us can get through that thing's hide, but if you freeze part of it, your friend could probably shatter something."

"I already thought of that." The girl hissed out. "If I use the spray, I have to be close, and Winston has to back off, or else he might get caught in to too. That just ends with me getting squished."

"What if I distract it?" Emily asked. At that, the girl shot her a glance, lasting less than a second before she focused on the grimm again.

"Are you willing to take that risk?"

"We can take it. Just don't be terrible." Emily said grimly.

"Heh, okay then. Hey, Winston!"

"I heard!" The brawler called back, sounding breathless. "Swap on three. One, two, THREE!"

Propelled by a burst of violet light, Winston flew back from the beringel, but before it could pursue, Emily danced in front of the beast. Twisting underneath a hasty swipe from its massive arm, Emily thrust out her guns and simultaneously fired a single round into each of its fists. The attack wasn't meant to cripple it, her rounds were too small and its fists too large for that to be viable, but Emily had no doubt it was exceedingly painful. Emily imagined it was glaring at her furiously, but with glowing red eyes and an unmoving bone mask, its range of expression was rather limited.

Still, her efforts had the desired effect; the grimm seemingly forgot about Winston, and followed Emily as she spun to its left, just out of reach, and put its back towards the other teens.

Still, Emily had to be careful; she had to stay away from the crushing blows it was hurling towards her, but without letting the beast move, so the ice Dust could take effect.

She was grateful then, when after more seconds than she would have liked, she felt a chill seeping into the air around them. Emily couldn't see the others past the grimm's imposing bulk, which also sheltered her from the worst of the freezing blast, but the cold was still enough to set her teeth chattering. The beringel barely even seemed to notice, though its movements became sluggish, and Emily could see a white frost building up on its pitch black legs.

It was more than a minute before the grimm noticed that its entire lower half was encased in a thin layer of ice. It looked down at itself, and then it exploded.

Splinters of frozen grimm flew throughout the clearing, while its intact torso fell to the ground and immediately began smoking. The sight was disgusting, almost nauseating. Emily was quietly thankful that grimm seemingly didn't have internal organs.

Where it had stood, there was now only Winston, lingering lightning rolling off his arms in waves, but Emily ignored him. Instead, she leveled a glare at the the other teen, the girl whose name she still had not learned.

"That was the slowest flash-freeze I have ever seen. Ever."

"Hey!" The girl looked incensed at that. "This stuff isn't infinite, you know. I don't want to waste my Dust for your convenience."

"I think what Mei means," Winston interrupted, stepping between the two girls, "is we've been going for two hours already, and who knows how long there is to go. We should all be conserving ammunition."

Emily deflated then. Winston wasn't wrong, their limited Dust did need to last through finding the relics, _and_ the return journey, and the girl - Mei - had used enough to get the job done.

"Alright, sorry. Dodging around that thing for that long stressed me out." She smiled at Mei. "We good?"

Mei narrowed her eyes, but nodded a second later. "Yeah, we're okay. Let's get to the ruins so you can find a partner of your own."

"Sounds like a plan, love." Emily agreed, and the trio set out, skirting around the remains of the beringel as they continued north.

* * *

Lena sat cross-legged atop a stone plinth, idly twirling an over-sized chess piece in her hands. Ozpin's vaunted relics, her and the others had concluded, finding the pieces arrayed on similar pillars that encircled the temple. There were sixteen pieces in total - four each of queens, bishops, knights, and rooks, and for each piece there were two of gold and two of ebony. Since there were also sixteen pillars, the five teens assumed they were the first to find the temple.

Junkrat had run ahead, grabbing the golden queen, though he had called it a king. Satya, for her part, had seen no need to either correct him or dispute his choice. Fareeha and Angela had agreed on one of the black queens, and Lena now held the other, having a suspicion that the pairs of relics might well determine their teams of four. _Four_ , Lena reminded herself, _not just Angie, Fareeha, and me_. The others had been sympathetic, when they saw Lena grab her solitary relic, and there was an unspoken agreement that they would all wait with her, the temple itself being the best place for Lena to wait for a partner.

The sound of voices from the treeline drew Lena out of her torpor, and the other loiterers gathered closer as they watched three new figures enter the clearing. Two, Lena did not recognise, but the third she did, and her face lit up.

"EMILY!" Lena called out, blinking over to the newcomers and engulfing her maybe-friend in a bear hug. "I'm so glad you got here okay, this whole thing has just been a huge mess!"

"It's good to see you too, Lena." Emily reciprocated the hug, laughing nervously at the other girl's dramatics. After a moment, Emily pushed Lena back to arm's-length - though they both still held each other's arms - and looked over towards the temple, and the other students watching Lena's antics bemusedly.

"So, uh, who did you end up partnering with, Lena?" Emily asked neutrally.

"Well, I uh..." Lena looked at her feet, rather than speaking directly to Emily, "I haven't got a partner. Everyone I've met is already paired up."

Lena kept on looking at her shoes, cursing herself internally for not wanting to see who Emily was paired with. Emily didn't respond at first, but Lena felt the other girl sag in her arms, and a sympathetic sigh escaped the redhead.

"Well then, I guess _I_ have to deal with you for the next four years."

...

 _What?_

Now Lena looked up, and saw Emily had that damned teasing smirk on her face, but her eyes were shining with something else. Lena's own eyes widened as she processed what had been said.

"...you?" Lena managed to croak out after a few seconds, her throat strangely tight.

"You were a fifth wheel, I was the third wheel." Emily laughed as she spoke, but quickly found herself embraced in another hug. Perhaps the correct term this time would be a 'glomp', for Lena had wrapped her legs around Emily, as well as her arms. The contact caused Emily to freeze up briefly, but the laughter quickly returned to her.

"Get down Lena," she instructed, not unkindly, "Fawkes is taking pictures."

"I'll split the profits with ya!" The brazen faunus called out.

"Stay there Lena." Emily amended, though the other girl paradoxically chose that moment to jump backwards.

For a moment Emily worried that the teasing might have finally gone too far, but then she noticed that Lena's wide-eyed stare was no longer aimed at her, but rather over her shoulder. Emily followed her line of sight.

Through the trees, they could make out four more students running towards the clearing. The four - including Hana from the previous night, as well as Mako, Genji, and Zenyatta if she recalled the names correctly - seemed to be moving as fast as they could, while still fending off attacks from a pack of juvenile beowolves that pursued them. The grimm looked so young that they couldn't even stand on two legs yet - adult beowolves were normally bipedal in combat - and Emily had to wonder why the trainees didn't just stop and kill them. They did stop when they entered the clearing, pulling up next to Emily and Lena, but by that point their frantic potshots actually had finished off the pack.

"Is this the right temple?" Zenyatta asked, his normally tranquil tenor subsumed by a focus Lena had never seen in the monk.

"Yeah, it is Zen. What's up?"

"Grab some relics and let's get out of here." It was Mako who spoke, and surprisingly Hana and Genji moved to comply without question, darting off into the ruins.

The others, who already had their relics, came forward to edge of the clearing, some mimicking Zenyatta and Mako by readying their weapons.

"Why are you guys so spooked by _baby_ beowolves?" Mei asked sharply.

"Because there is an Elder Grimm here, spawning them." Zenyatta replied. At that, anyone who did not have their weapon drawn quickly rectified that, or else sent Dust running across their arms, in Winston's case.

"There are no Elder Grimm in the Emerald Forest." Fareeha stated with certainty, although she too had her crossbow aimed into the foliage. "The professors would not allow it."

"Maybe you should let _it_ know about that rule." Genji had returned with a relic, but the others all focused in on where he was pointing.

The Grimm stood about a hundred meters away. It was humanoid, but inhumanly tall and thin, perhaps three meters, and even from that distance they could all see the antlered skull that it had for a head. The Grimm walked slowly, stepping behind a tree - and stepping out from behind another one, much closer. A dozen or more grimm wolves melted out of the underbrush around it, and stalked towards the temple.

"Well, shit." Emily spoke for everybody.

"We've all got relics. We should leave." Mako pointed out.

"I'm with Roady there, our mission's over." Junkrat agreed, and the initiate carefully began to back away.

"Hold up." A voice called out, and everyone stopped to look at Lena, who alone had not moved, nor even deployed her weapons.

"Lena, come on." Emily urged, tugging at her partner's arm. "We've got what we need, now let's go."

"No. This test isn't about getting relics. It's about seeing if we're worthy of being huntresses, and huntsmen."

"I'm going to regret this, but what are you getting at Lena?" Hana asked.

Lena flicked out her wrists, and Phase and Pulse unfolded into her hands - both barrels pointing towards the Grimm, while their backwards curved blades gleamed in the late-morning sun.

"Let's kill it."

* * *

 **Author's Notes: So what kind of faunus is Junkrat then? I'll give you a clue; it's a really stupid joke, not something to worry about.**

 **Welp, that's the pairings out of the way; next chapter will be a massive blowout, easily the most action-y thing I've ever written, at least in terms of the sheer amount of participants. My original works tend to feature small groups of powerful characters on both sides, so a full-fledged battle will be a novel experience.**

 **Timeline is these guys got to the temple before RWBYJNPR, but I am NOT going back to cross-reference which pieces were still present in the episode, or if there were actually kings/pawns.**

 **I plan for the Grimm to feature quite heavily in this fic, at least compared to canon where it's seriously like once or twice a season. In between whatever happens with Talon, I want to show these guys actually doing the one thing hunters are meant to do, both before and after the Fall.**

 **Since Emily is a civilian in OW canon, I needed to come up with a weapon and fighting style for her. I chose a dual-pistol gun kata style purely because of personal preference, and after a youtube binge of fight scenes from movies like John Wick and Kingsman. I also finally watched Equilibrium for reference, and while I acknowledge it codified awesome firearm martial arts, that movie has not aged well in my opinion. RWBY obviously runs on this kind of style, but I thought it would be a nice nod to her OW background that Emily's weapons aren't too crazy, and I intend for her to fill the niche of a more pragmatic fighter, compared to most of these ijits.  
** **Best action scene ever remains the finger-gun shootout in Tales from the Borderlands.**

 **For further visual reference, this version of Winston basically looks and fights like a melee-biotic from Mass Effect, brawling with Lightning and Gravity Dust, and I'll tell you the inspiration for the Elder Grimm next chapter.**

 **I sometimes feel bad about dropping names without much in the way of explanation; like, should I explain in the text why a Schnee and a Belladonna being close should be a big deal, for readers who don't watch RWBY? Then again, this is a clearly labelled Overwatch/RWBY fanfic, anyone reading is almost certainly at least passingly familiar with both, so I feel like unless something impacts the plot, it can safely just slide in for people that get it, and it doesn't matter for those who don't. That's one thing that always gets me about writing fanfic: how much of the lore that fans would be familiar with should one explain?**

 **In the process of writing these chapters, I got _really_ tired of having characters meet and exchange names. If people seem to know names of people they haven't met, just assume that they did meet at some point prior to initiation, or at least catch each other's names, and it was too boring to write about.**

 **Also, as of writing, I've been 25 for two hours. It sucks so far :P**

 **[Names and Skins]**

 **Moira (Professor Moira O'Deorain) - the shirt & tie look from her origin video**


	8. Ruin

"In my defense," Lena called out, in a moment of quiet while she deftly reloaded Phase and Pulse simultaneously, "this was a really dumb idea, and none of you should have gone along with it."

"How on Remnant is that a point in your favour?!" Emily shouted back, putting two rounds into a wolf's skull, spinning the now empty pistol around to grasp it by the barrel, and using it to backhand a second wolf with a sickening crunch of cracking bone. "And don't empty both guns at the same time! The whole point of having two is to never stop shooting."

"Can you two please save the flirting for after the battle?"

The rebuke came from Angela, who was crouched in between the partners. Beneath her, Hana lay on the ground. A steady stream of golden light was flowing from the blonde's hands, into a deep gash the Elder Grimm had torn into the faunus's side. Hana had been among the first to charge in, right beside Lena, and the strange monster's clawed arm had torn right through her aura.

At present, the Grimm was trading blows with Winston, the scrawny teen able to deflect its wicked strikes with vibrant bursts of Dust. The rest of the students were scattered around the ruins, trying to clear out the wolves that the Elder Grimm was somehow conjuring from between the trees.

A particularly vicious strike sent Winston stumbling back, but rather than pursue him, the Grimm turned, and raised an arm into empty space. Black smoke engulfed the limb, and from that emerged a flock of nevermore - small bird-like grimm with razor sharp talons and rending beaks. The flock zeroed in on Genji, who had to break off his own beowolf fight to slash at the new threat. The wolf might well have taken advantage and mauled the boy, had Fareeha not nailed it to the ground with a single bolt as the hawk-faunus passed overhead.

Several of the nevermore broke away from the swordsman, wheeling towards Lena and the others, along with a fresh wave of beowolves. Ignoring the earlier advice, Lena unloaded on the encroaching flyers, but her machine pistols were ill suited to small, swift targets. Most of her shots missed, and Lena was ready to go in with her blades instead, but just before the flock reached her the grimm bounced off a shimmering wall of blue.

Lena turned in confusion, to see that at some point Satya and Mako had joined them, the dark-skinned woman erecting a barrier of aura around the impromptu party, and Fareeha hovered overhead, surveying the area.

"This isn't working." Fareeha muttered just loud enough for Lena to hear. "Everyone, group up here!" She called out, and the divided students began to work their way towards Satya's shelter.

"I don't know if I can protect us all." Satya pointed out, noticing that the retreating teens were drawing more wolves in behind them.

"You take one side then" Mei had just arrived, and overheard. The ice-witch took up a position opposite Satya, and began pooring Dust from her weapon, forming a wall of her own that looked to be at least a foot thick. "This will stop them."

"But we still need to deal with the big one." Winston pointed out. Unlike the wolves, the Elder Grimm hadn't followed when Winston retreated. It seemed content to let its spawn do the hard work. The creature had not gone easy on him, however; the young man was cradling an arm, and the unhealed scratches on his face indicated his aura was running on fumes.

"It's a Leshen." Angela said, from where she kneeled beside Hana. "We have some in the Atlesian alps. They're tough, for their size, but the real danger is the grimm they summon. If we can pour enough damage on, it'll go down."

"And we'll all get ripped apart while we do it." Genji commented. "We need a plan to deal with the Leshen, and the wolves."

"I have a plan." To the surprise of pretty much everyone, it was Hana that spoke. She was still on the ground next to Angela, but had managed to sit up under her own power, and the wound on her torso was still an angry red, but no longer bleeding. "That is, if Mako's up for it."

The tusked faunus looked down it the injured girl, then combined a snort of laughter with an agreeing nod. A look of comprehension appeared on Junkrat's face, and his eyes lit up even more than usual.

"We finally gonna play for real?" The wiry man asked his larger friend, and with a gesture from Mako, Junkrat turned to fill in the rest of the students.

"Roady's semblance can wrangle all the small grimm. Angel-face-"

"-Don't call me that-"

"-can keep his aura topped up, and I'll blow 'em ta bits when they gather 'round. Meanwhile, everyone else can go barbecue the leshy."

"Are you sure you can take all the wolves?" Fareeha asked of the hog-boy.

"Lotsa padding." Was Mako's response, as well as a hearty slap to his gut.

"I won't let you fall." Angela added, rising and pulling Hana up to her feet as well.

"That's all well and good," Emily called from where she was taking shots over Mei's wall, driving back a curious beowolf, "but who's going to tank the big guy? Winston's still down, and these things aren't going to wait much longer."

Winston got to his feet, as if rising to the challenge, but quickly lost his balance, and would have landed in the dirt had Zenyatta not moved to support him. "Sorry guys." He muttered quietly, but everyone could hear the shame that stained his voice.

"Don't worry Winston," Hana spoke up, "like Jamie said, time to get serious. I'll tank it."

"Hana, no." Angela stepped in front of the rabbit faunus and literally put her foot down. "You are barely healed, I wouldn't let you fight a creep right now, let alone that thing."

Hana chuckled darkly, and began glowing a soft pink as her aura enveloped her. Angela instinctively stepped back.

"Don't you worry doc," Junkrat chimed in, "Hana's semblance is _bullshit_."

The light soon became so bright that Hana could no longer be seen through it, but just as quickly is began to dissipate. When it was gone, however, the glow did not reveal the petite girl, but rather a bulbous canopy of rust-coloured metal, held up by two comparatively flimsy looking mechanical legs, and sporting large round guns instead of arms. Of the girl, only the head and arms could be seen, the latter gripping a set of controls.

A hand tilted forward, and the walker began stomping towards the rapidly deteriorating wall of ice.

"I want one." Emily deadpanned as the walker stopped before her.

"I want _twelve_." Lena responded through her own slack-jawed expression.

"Ready Mako?" Hana asked.

"Yup. I'll draw 'em in as soon as the walls are down."

"Well in that case-" rather than finishing her sentence, Hana unloaded both arm-cannon's - which fired a wide spread of pellets each second - into the ice, which gave way almost immediately.

Hana's mech surged through the breach propelled by rockets, with Mako darting through right behind her. The rest - barring Winston, and Mei who stayed with him - poured through more haphazardly, Junkrat and Angela peeling off to follow Mako while the rest charged after Hana, towards the leshen.

Lena saw a beolwolf charging towards the column, and readied a blade to put it down. Before it got within reach, however, it dug its dark paws into the dirt, kicking up a spray as it violently changed direction. Despite being only meters away from Lena, it ignored her and those around her entirely, cutting a path straight to where Mako made his stand. Already a cluster of wolved snapped around the large huntsman, and a flock of nevermore fluttered around his head until a protracted blast from his flamethrower fixed that problem. Even the much closer Angela and Junkrat went ignored, despite the latter tossing Dust grenades into their midst with gusto.

 _Huh, I guess he really can attract grimm_.

It wasn't so much the strangeness of it that bothered Lena in the back of her mind; semblances were diverse to the point of usually being unique in the specific details. Variations on themes like teleportation, telekinesis, and self-duplication were fairly run-of-the-mill. No, what bugged Lena was the knowledge that, on some level, a person's semblance reflected their very soul, the foundations of who they were as a person. So what did being able to draw in monsters that feed on negativity say about Mako?

Lena couldn't let the thought occupy her mind for long, though. The leshen wasn't affected by Mako's semblance; whatever it was, the faunus's power likely relied on younger grimms' inability to ignore a target. The leshen was older and more experienced than the wolves it summoned, and quite possibly even older than the students. It knew to focus on Hana, who would pour shots into it when she saw an opening, but boost away once it turned to her. It also knew to keep an eye on the other students that now encircled it.

Zenyatta, Emily, and Fareeha stayed back from the long grasp of the spindly creature, sending orbs, bullets, and bolts into its hide where they could. Satya and Genji went in close, whip cracking and sword slashing at any claws that ventured towards the pair. Lena made the judgement call that her blades would do more than her bullets, and moved to join the melee.

In hindsight, she should have blinked in. As soon as she took a step too close, the leshen thrust one clawed hand into the ground. Several meters from its body, the claws reemerged in a plume of dirt, nearly impaling Lena as a bloom of razors sprouted from the earth. Lena rolled aside in the nick of time, slashing the - _tendrils?-_ more on principle than anything else before continuing inwards.

At close range, the Elder Grimm looked even stranger, like it was based on a tree rather than a beast. Rather than fur or feathers, pitch black leaves poked out from between its bony plates, and its limbs had a jagged, asymmetric quality that looked even more unnatural than grimm usually did. Even the antlers atop its skull-head looked more like branches from that distance.

"Are you getting through?" Lena asked of Genji, joining him in hacking away at the leshen's arms.

"No, none of us are." As if to emphasize his point, one of Fareeha's bolts bounced off its shoulder, and Lena had to herself deflect _that_.

"I think Zen is actually doing the most damage." Satya added. "At least when his orbs hit, I hear cracking."

"We'll see about that." Genji said with a huff, and when he next brought his katana up, it was swathed in his green aura. The infused blade arced up to meet the leshen's arm at the elbow, and carried through with a shower of what Lena could only call grimm splinters.

The battlefield went quiet for a moment as everyone - including the leshen - looked at the severed stump of its arm. The dismembered limb was already fading away. Genji looked like he was about to step in and finish the job, but Satya gripped his shoulder. She was looking at the stump, and Lena and Genji followed her gaze. The jagged edges of the wound were wriggling oddly, and then began to stretch outwards. A new elbow formed, and from the remaining splinters emerged new talons of perfect darkness. From severance to regeneration had taken less than five seconds in total.

"Oh shit." Lena wasn't quite sure who said it. It could have been her, or even all of them.

"Focus on the head!" Fareeha called out, but her own bolt broke harmlessly on the antlers. Zenyatta's orbs were similarly caught by either arm or horn, and Emily's bullets just pinged off the skull without piercing the venerable bone.

"We'll, that's us out, I guess." Genji sulked as the trio pulled back.

"Maybe not." Hana said as she coasted to a halt beside the melee fighters. "Satya, do you reckon your whip could tangle its legs, keep it still?"

"Perhaps." Satya experimentally curled her whip of blue light around the Grimm's legs, and pulled taut. The Grimm immediately cast its baleful gaze in their direction, and cast an arm towards the trio, only for that to get tackled aside by Hana's charging mech.

"Okay, Zen, can you get all your orbs around the arms and at least slow them down?" Hana called next.

"Let us see." The monk replied, sending all his orbs out much more slowly than he would for an attack, linking them together in a sort of caterpillar shape that he twisted around an arm, which was then wrenched up and aside. "Only one arm, or it will overpower me."

"I'll take care of the other." Hana called out, and true to her words she quickly had the other arm in a submission-hold with her mech's shotgun-arms, though the leshen was not taking the treatment lightly as its talons carved deep furrows into the mech's orange canopy.

"And now, we rip its head off." Genji stated summarily.

Lena and Genji darted in close, past the disabled arms, to where Satya bound its legs in place. Even then, its waist was at their head height, but its craggy hide provided easy purchase as the two teens began to climb its torso. Once they were at its shoulders - and ignoring the painful screeches it was giving off - Lena grabbed the antlers and wrenched backwards, exposing the leshen's neck for Genji. The young man ran two fingers down the length of his katana, coating the blade in his green aura as he did, and without further delay tore the glowing edge through the beast's throat. The head came away easily, and instantly began to dissolve in Lena's hands. Both breathed a sigh of relief, before noticing an important detail.

The leshen beneath them was still thrashing against its bonds.

"It's still alive!" Fareeha called from somewhere above them. "We must cut out the very heart of the monster!"

Genji took the instruction literally, and began carving into its chest with his shorter blade. Meanwhile, Lena saw the edges of its neck writhing, the wound sealing, and decided to jam Pulse's barrel right into its severed neck and hold down the trigger.

"This isn't working," Genji grunted, "I don't have enough aura left to pierce its hide."

"Back off." Lena instructed, and Genji quite rightly looked at her like she was mad. "Trust me, I've got a terrible idea."

Genji's eyes rolled impressively, but he muttered 'good luck', and leaped off the towering Grimm.

Lena, bracing herself mentally and physically, removed Pulse, quickly stashed the weapon in her gauntlet, and then thrust her hand down and into the opening where the leshen's head had been.

The inside of a grimm felt oddly gelatinous - there were no internal bones or organs, but the eldritch fluid possessed an unpleasantly lumpy feeling. Lena swirled her hands through the sickening mess for a few seconds before her fingers closed around something solid.

Instantly, the Grimm went perfectly still, before its flailing resumed tenfold.

Lena tried to pull her arm out, but found that the edges of the hole had closed up around her, and tendrils of blackness were beginning to creep towards her shoulder. In her periphery, she saw Hana's mech thrown aside in a mighty heave, short an arm and much of its outer plating. Opposite, Zenyatta's orbs were harder to remove, but the leshen was beginning to overpower their hold.

"Well, I hope this works." Lena cheered herself on, and then blinked away.

When she re-materialized, her arm was covered in light-red gunk, though at least the ring of dark creepers around her bicep disintegrated as soon as she flexed the limb. She saw the leshen's body keep moving, but it was now less a defense and more like a seizure, spasming randomly. Randomly, but with enough power that the ribbons entrapping its legs snapped as Satya's aura collapsed under the strain.

Most importantly, however, Lena still held the object she had grasped in her hand. Now exposed, it looked like a carved bone rune, a rough circle with inset red markings similar that those of a grimm's skull. It was also vibrating and faintly _hissing._

Lena threw the thing to the ground, and to her horror its rattling motions carried it slowly but steadily towards its flailing body. With a yelp, Lena unfolded Phase and Pulse and unloaded onto the rune, her bullets sparking and chipping the bone but not halting its motion. Lena was about to grab it again - instinctive disgust be damned, they needed to _kill_ this thing - when a _twang_ from above heralded a bolt of forged metal plunging down and impaling the accursed object.

"That better have worked," Fareeha said as she drifted down to land beside Lena, "because those heavy shots ruin my bowstring."

"Save them for the shot that counts?" Zenyatta half-suggested, half-asked and he and the others jogged up beside them.

"I'm hoping that is what I did." Fareeha replied.

In the center of their makeshift circle the Grimm's core still thrummed and shuddered, the engravings glowing visibly. In the background, the body still thrashed, but far enough away that the students were content to just keep an eye on it. After a few tense moments, the core exploded with a final sound, one that sounded disconcertingly like a human cry of fury. Behind them, the body finally collapsed to the ground, smoking slowly.

"... We should probably help Mako and the others." Lena hedged, after they were sure the leshen couldn't get up again.

"Aw no worries, we're here!" Junkrat called out, revealing that Lena hadn't noticed the two faunus and Angela joining the circle.

"I think, after Genji cut off the first arm, the wolves seemed to stop spawning." Angela explained.

"Didn't take long for the rest to _burn_." Mako finished. "Good job with yours too."

The lightly singed hog-faunus flashed the team at large a thumbs-up, and that, coupled with the receding adrenaline, sent several of the teenagers into fits of relieved laughter.

* * *

"Well that was very dramatic." Moira said, watching the leshen on Morrison's screen fade into nothingness.

"Something isn't right about this." Morrison grumbled, more to himself than to his guest.

"No kidding. I'm no huntress, but I'm guessing something that powerful shouldn't be part of initiation?"

"Not that." Morrison said in low tones. "You're right, of course, but nobody can control grimm spawns. It's probably just bad luck that initiation happened before one of the professors caught wind of its presence. No, what I want to know..."

Morrison expanded three other feeds on his display. Two showed students fighting giant grimm; not Elder varieties, but still older and more powerful than first years would be expected to face. The third showed the cliff-tops, unused since the students were launched into the forest, but still broadcasting. It provided a live view of Beacon's headmaster and his second, overseeing the day's events personally.

"... is why Ozpin isn't stepping in, calling off the test? Why is he just _letting_ these raw recruits go up against such dangerous grimm?"

* * *

 **Author's Notes: Okay, I don't like writing big battles with twelve major characters. Honestly, turns out it's much the same problem as writing a story with 27 main characters, but on a smaller scale, so in the end I decided to make the Leshen battle much less involved than I had originally meant to. It's just me learning where the line is before content becomes padding with this many characters.**

 **Another of my favourite works is Avatar of Victory, a crossover of Mass Effect and Avatar: The Last Airbender, and that fic does combat insanely well, but it's something I struggle to write. Keeping track of all the actors, determining the flow of the battle, and making sure it all makes sense when put together is actually quite challenging, and in this case, I feel I just bit off more than I could chew. The most I've done in my original works is four main characters vs a dozen or so mooks, and even that gets messy. Good thing this story doesn't have an entire arc revolving around 4v4 team fights...**

 **There was even going to be a gag where I cut in just before the finale, with an author's note directing the reader to start playing the Overwatch theme in the background, but I don't think that was earned in the end.**

 **So the Elder Grimm is a Leshen, based on the monster of the same name from the Witcher 3. Fans will note its entrance, warping between trees, is lifted right from that game and one of my all-time favourite creepy cutscenes. As I mentioned previously, grimm will be quite a big part of this story, and the Leshen will not be the only new variety I bring in from some of my favourite monsters.**

 **Cards on the table, I have no idea what will happen once I start teaching, but I am eager to wrap up this first arc in the next chapter, next week, so at least if everything goes to hell and I can't update for weeks, there is some sense of conclusion.**

 **On another note, I've been trying out Brigette while playing the Retribution event, and I've absolutely fallen in love with her. Originally I had her slated to be introduced in V2, but not important until V4, but now I'm really considering bringing her in much earlier if I can justify it.**


	9. Flat Circle

**Author's Note: In case anyone is curious, the usually rambling AN at the end also includes what roles the older OW staff have a Beacon. Just thought I'd lay it out.**

* * *

"Satya Vaswani, Mako Rutledge, Genji Shimada, and Jamison Fawkes; the four of you retrieved the white queen pieces. From this day forward, you will work _together_ as Team SJGR, led by Satya Vaswani."

Up on the stage, Satya allowed an expression of pride to grace her features. The pleasant feeling she got from being confirmed as leader, however, dropped very quickly when Junkrat threw a congratulatory arm around her shoulders.

"Blimey, I knew Satya was gunning for team leader, but I don't reckon she wanted this." Lena commented to her partner, applauding politely. Nobody had missed the emphasis Professor Ozpin had put on the word 'together'.

"Fifty lien says she publicly yells at Jamie this semester." Emily remarked quietly.

"Emily, that is both a terrible thing to say about potential friends, and a terrible bet for me to take." Lena couldn't quite suppress a giggle as she pretended to chide the redhead.

"One thing I don't get though," Emily carried on in a much more casual tone, "how does he get 'Sugar' out of S-J-G-R?"

"Oh, that's easy, the J is silent."

Emily might have argued the point, but went silent as their team was ushered onto the stage next. It was the first time Lena had seen the headmaster up close, and she took the chance to examine the legendary Professor Ozpin. Tall and lean, and dressed in a dark green suit with a forest green scarf, the man didn't really look like an educator _or_ a master huntsman. He certainly carried with him an aura that commanded respect, but beyond that he was inscrutable. While his hair was fully grey, his face had a youthful quality. If pressed, the young huntress honestly didn't think she could pick an approximate age for the professor.

"Fareeha Amari, Angela Ziegler, Emily Darke, and Lena Oxton; the four of you retrieved the black queen pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as Team FADE, led by-"

Lena stole a glance at her teammates. After everything that had happened in the forest, she would gladly follow any of them. It wouldn't be her though, not after putting half the cohort in such danger, and Lena was okay with that.

"- Fareeha Amari."

Lena nodded, joining in to clap for her new leader. The hawk-faunus's tactical skills had been clear for all to see. Little wonder as she had apparently grown up in the academy, having a professor for a mother. Lena saw Fareeha standing tall and proud, steadfastly ignoring the fact that Beacon's resident doctor had abandoned applause in favour of hollering her daughter's name.

Once the noise died down, the four of them rejoined the audience as the next team took the stage.

* * *

"- Team SHZM, led by Hana Scarlatina."

And with those two words from the headmaster - her own name - Hana's world came to a grinding halt. She froze up.

She froze up, _in front of Professor Ozpin_. She froze up so badly, that by the time she regained some awareness of the world around her, Hana had been walked off stage by her new team-mates.

She caught the end of the local boy, Winston, talking, thought not to her.

"- see the doctor?"

"No no, I'm okay." Hana managed to say. Zenyatta smiled softly - not that that was unusual - while Winston and Mei looked at her with concern and skepticism, respectively.

"You didn't look okay, 'team leader'." Mei said sharply, and nobody missed the way she winced at those words.

"I just-" Hana choked again, looking from one to the other until her eyes met Zenyatta's. "It should have been you!"

Zenyatta raised an eyebrow, but made no move to speak.

"Like, I know I saved the day and everything, but you're all wise and caring and stuff, I thought for sure you would be the leader."

Zenyatta considered for a moment before speaking, while Mei and Winston watched from the sidelines.

"I appreciate your kind words, miss Scarlatina, but I doubt it is concern for my missing out that has caused such distress."

Hana sagged. Of course the monk wasn't going to let her make this about him.

"I'm not a leader Zen. I'm not saying you _should_ do this; I'm saying I _can't._ "

Hana stared glumly at her feet, not reacting when Zenyatta placed an entirely predictable comforting hand on her shoulder. It was, however, Mei who spoke first.

"We are at a school, you know. They have those, back in Vacuo?" the ice-witch sniped.

Hana couldn't muster the energy to be angry, but she still stared at the other girl in confusion. Thankfully, Zenyatta stepped in to play diplomat.

"I think what miss Zhou is trying to say, is that you will have much more opportunity to learn and grow from this appointment than I would."

"... learn and grow?"

"This is just a school." Winston chimed in. "The professors probably chose you because they want you to learn those kind of skills now, rather than out in the Grimmlands."

"... I'm being a massive idiot, aren't I." Hana bit out.

"Yeah," Mei agreed lightly, "but you're an idiot with a badass robot suit. I'll stand behind you in any fight."

"You may be our leader, but we are all a team." Zenyatta stepped back, casting his arms out to encompass all four teenagers. "Stumble, and we will catch you. Rise, and we will lift you."

Hana stood up straight, took a deep breath, and showed her team a genuine smile.

"Thanks guys. I guess we can all be awesome together."

"You see," Winston directed his statement at Mei, "I told you the professors know what they're doing."

* * *

 _Earlier_

Professor Morrison stared blankly at the sheet of paper lying before him, as he had done for almost the last half hour. He had no idea what to do.

After initiation, he and the rest of the senior faculty had retired to the staff-room for a most tedious ceremony: the naming of the new teams. It was a tradition as old as Beacon Academy itself - which was now entering its eightieth year of operation.

As with every other hunting academy, Beacon organised its students into team of four, and since the beginning those teams had been named by taking an initial from each member, and using them to approximate a word. After the Colour Revolution it had become 'the thing' to also have that word be, in some way, a colour, just as had become popular with the naming of children. He had read somewhere that almost forty percent of all people born after the Revolution had a colour for either their first or last name, with a particularly high concentration among hunting families. However, as one might be able to discern from his own name, Jack Morrison did not share that particular inclination, and besides, he struggled enough just to make any word fit.

Morrison could only glare at the paper, as if trying to summon an acronym through sheer willpower. If anyone ever manifested that semblance, Morrison would ensure they immediately gained tenure at Beacon.

The staff-room was almost empty now; besides himself, only professors Port and Lindholm remained, each scribbling away furiously as they tested different letter arrangements. Morrison looked down at his own paper, and the names on it: Tekhartha Zenyatta, Harold Winston, Mei-Ling Zhou, and Hana Scarlatina. He also had a dictionary beside him, propped open to 'Z' for inspiration - as the obvious choice for leader, Zenyatta's initial had to be the first.

 _But nothing begins with a 'Z'..._

Morrison scanned the pages.

 _Zebra... no... zineb?... no... zygo-NO!_

Morrison pushed the dictionary away with a huff, and looked around the room for inspiration. His eyes fell on Professor Torbjorn Lindholm, who was muttering under his breath.

"Hrmm... can't have too many vowels... I am NOT using the Z," Morrison snorted at that, "... AHA! If I use Emily's last name, I can make FADE! Eureka!"

Torbjorn slammed his pen down - and how he wrote using the prosthetic clamp that was his left hand, Morrison never worked out - and stood from his chair; an act which left Morrison's colleague considerably shorter than he had been while sitting. As the world's shortest huntsman (Mantle's Book of Records confirmed) strolled past, Morrison bit his lip in thought. Normally, the grizzled veteran was not one to request help outside of combat, and NEVER one to try and put his problems on someone else. But, he had been working fruitlessly for forty minutes, and Torbjorn was one of his oldest friends - a member of his own team, in fact. Surely he wouldn't mind.

"Hey, Torb-"

"Sorry Jack, I can't stay. Lots ta do ta prepare the workshop, ye know!"

And the traitorous dwarf fled the staff-room. Morrison noted the direction he turned would definitely NOT lead his former comrade to the weapon workshops. He sighed in resignation, then jumped when a meaty arm planted itself on the table beside him.

"Having trouble there, my boy?" A loud voice followed.

 _No no no NO, I do NOT have the time or the patience for a conversation with Peter Port. NO!_

"Please." His mouth betrayed him.

"Not to worry, old chum. You happen to be looking at a veritable master of this particular task. Why, I remember the first team I named, they went on to-"

"Peter." Morrison interrupted. It wasn't rude; it was _necessary_. "Why don't we swap for a minute, see if fresh eyes can help us both?"

"Oho, no need for that! I'm just trying to decide between 'Surge', 'Sugar', or 'Suffrage',"

 _What._

"but here now, let me see what you're working with?" Port leaned over Morrison's shoulder and examined the paper, eyes furrowed under bushy brows.

"My leader's name starts with 'Z'." Morrison waved towards the discarded dictionary. " _Nothing_ halfway decent starts with a 'Z'."

"Couldn't you just use the 'T' from Tekhartha? Seems like it would be much easier."

"It's apparently more like a title. Cultural thing, can't use it."

"Ah, well then." Port glared at the names, more focused than Morrison had ever seen him in the lecture hall. "If you were to make miss Scarlatina the leader, you could get S-H-Z-M, or 'Shazam'."

"Hana isn't ready for that kind of responsibility. She's strong in her mech, and her tactical transcripts were flawless, but she is arrogant, and unused to working with others."

"Oh, call it a learning experience, I'm sure the girl will be fine!" Port chortled.

"No, Peter." Morrison leveled his best glare. It was better than Port's any day, not that the Grimm Studies professor cared. "This is an Academy for graduating monster hunters, not the damn mathletes. If Ozpin heard I'd made someone who wasn't read a team leader-"

"Ozpin? HA!" Port cut in with a mirthful snort. "You can't seriously think the headmaster would care. Or do you think 'Team RWBY lead by Ruby' was some flash of inspiration. Ozpin had the exact same problem: nothing good begins with a-"

"No." Morrison cut in, resting his head in his hands. "Peter, thank you, but no. You go on and finish up, I'm going to keep working until I get this right."

"Suit yourself old chap. I think I _will_ go with Team Sugar."

 _Thank the Mercy for that_ , Morrison thought to himself as the other professor packed up his papers and left. He stared furiously at the papers, intent on finding a way to make Zenyatta the team's leader.

 _Ten minutes later_

"Hell with it, I'm sure they'll be fine."

* * *

 **Author's Notes: And that's that; initiation done, I can finally get my own narrative rolling...**

 _ **/remembers he has to go be a teacher or something now/**_

 **... assuming I have any free time for writing for the next five years.**

 **The earliest of early readers might remember this as the original chapter 2. It was also the first scene I wrote for this fic, and I posted it early when I had to go on hiatus because I'd taken on a management role. How history repeats.**

 **Fun fact, this is more or less my actual thought process when naming the teams. I knew WHO I wanted teamed together, but the names were an utter pain to sort out. In the first version, I even when so far as to change Junkrat's first name to 'Ulysses' for Team SUGR, but I reckon the J being silent has a bit of comedic value. SRJG 'Surge' was another contender, and SFRG 'Suffrage' was my cue to go to sleep.**

 **On a related note, in the initial version of this chapter, the one I posted more than a year ago, the AN's mentioned three additional team names that weren't revealed due to spoilers. One I'll now say is Jack Morrison, Ana Amari, Gabriel Rojo, and Torbjorn Lindholm, and I'm tossing up Team JARL for being cool in my head, or Team JART (pronounced 'Art') to make the J thing a running gag. The second is still spoilery, and still the one I'm most proud of, and the third I honestly don't remember who they were meant to be.  
It's not Hanzo's team, they're HJZL ('Hazel', first version had Angus McCree but the J thing works so well), and after that I'm out of characters that actually have teams. I have NO IDEA who the third hidden team was.**

 **While many of the beats and gags are the same, the chapter was re-written entirely, mainly because, when I posted the new chapter 2, I didn't realise one could download copies of posted chapters. Still, it is expanded somewhat, but I think it offers an interesting sample of the feel I was going for when I first started writing it, in late 2016. So much has happened since then, in life, that I feel there was never any hope of this second attempt being the same thing.**

 **[Names and Skins]**

 **Torbjorn (Professor Torbjorn Lindholm) - Classic**

 **[Jobs]**

 **Morrison/Soldier:76 - Battlefield Tactics Professor  
Torbjorn - Mechashift Weaponry Professor / Workshop... Keeper? Curator? Person who makes sure students don't break everything.  
Ana - Chief Medical Officer, Former Aura Studies Professor  
Moira - Aura Studies Professor**


End file.
